By: Timothy Hanrahan
Posted In: Entertainment
Photo credit: HBO.com
On Feb. 16, 2009, HBO premiered Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary film, Right America, Feeling Wronged- Some Voices from the Campaign Trail.
Pelosi, a journalist and documentary film maker and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempts to depict the elephant (no pun intended) in the room that nobody in the media wants to talk about: Republicans. “In 2008, I followed the McCain campaign across the country to listen to Americans who did not want Barack Obama to be their President,” Pelosi said in the introduction. “While not representative of the entire Republican Party, these are just some of the party faithful who turned out at campaign rallies along the way.” Let’s face it, anyone paying attention to the media would get the impression that the Republican Party is as popular as Bill Buckner singing a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park. Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but it would be unwise for progressives to pop champagne just yet. According to American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate, 59 million Americans voted for John McCain. “They had huge crowds, and I felt they were really underrepresented in the media,” Pelosi told Salon.com on Mar. 4, 2009. “I didn’t feel like I saw these people on TV.” Indeed many of those Pelosi interviewed felt disenfranchised. Many McCain supporters question the objectivity of the media. “Chris Matthews said at an Obama convention that he was getting tinglies up and down his legs, and that they were so inspired,” said one interviewee. “I mean, we’re looking at that for news…this guy is supposed to be an expert, like the news guy.” Another hot topic for Republicans was fear of socialism.”This country is full of idiots; they need to wake up,” one man said. “We don’t need to become a socialist country. They want to take money from the hard working man and give it to the guy who only wants to come to work two days a week.” Pelosi then told the same man that she thinks that Obama wants to take money from the rich and give him the money. He angrily responded, “I don’t care what people can do for me, I only care for what’s good for the economy.” Another young man scrawled “say no to socialism” on the back of his white t-shirt, but spelled the word socialism incorrectly. When Pelosi confronted him and asked him to define socialism he responded, “okay, so socialism it’s basically like the views of Hitler, it’s like the in between of communism and I don’t know what the other one is.” This documentary is not without its fringe elements. The more reactionary interviewees included: a proud southerner who told Pelosi unabashedly that if he had his way that even women wouldn’t have the right to vote, a truck driver in Mississippi who used a derogatory racial term to describe President Obama and a seemingly normal looking man who believes that President Obama is the anti-Christ. Not every McCain supporter expressed extreme opinions. “When we come to these gatherings, we see the worst in people,” one young man said while McCain supporters chanted “get a job” in the background. “There are very good normal people who show up to these rallies like me. It’s unfortunate that there are those who become vocal who really give their candidate a bad name.” Pelosi paints a portrait of an America that remains divided. An America where half of the population is terrified of change and distrustful of the newly elected President. Whether they hate his economic policies, perceived radical liberal ideology, and even the color of his skin, this documentary depicts Republicans as embittered and downtrodden. Notwithstanding, one McCain supporter told Pelosi, “the one thing that we all have in common is that we all hate the same thing.”
