I’m still a little disconcerted that Little Green Footballs, which I used to consider the biggest cesspool on the intertubz, is now an oasis of sanity compared to Fox News. There is a moment in the movie Game Change when John McCain nobly rejects the advice of his advisers that he utilize the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but then signs off on the lesser evil of going after Obama’s association with Bill Ayers. Pailin is given responsibility for utilizing this attack and comes up with the “palling around with terrorists” line. Very quickly the McCain handlers discover that they’ve unleashed a really hateful and destructive beast upon the land as the Palin rallies become overwhelmed with racists. Things get so bad that McCain eventually declares that he never wanted to run “this kind of campaign.”
The movie is loosely based on real history but it’s still basically fictional. What’s real is the legacy.
There’s another point in the movie that takes place right after McCain concedes the election to Obama. He talks to Palin and he tells her that she will now be a leader of the party and she shouldn’t cede that leadership to the Rush Limbaughs of the world because they will destroy the party. I don’t know if McCain ever said anything like that to Palin, but she didn’t take his advice if he did. The result is that four years later Fox News’ readership is more racist and crazy than Little Green Footballs ever was. And that’s saying something.
