(Clint Eastwood's introduction at the RNC)

YYYEEEESSSSSSS!!!!! Amidst the tired rhetoric, empty platitudes, and overwrought attacks, a fistful of awesome emerged in the night! Where it spent 12 minutes on the most important night of Mitt Romney's life... yelling at a chair. (wild audience cheering and applause)

Yes. (blows kisses to the sky) Thank you, Jesus. And oh, how the Outlaw Josey wailed.



CLINT EASTWOOD (8/30/2012): And how do you handle, uh, how do you handle it? I mean, what do you say to people? Do you... do you just, you know... I know... people, ah, people were wondering — you don't... you don't handle that. OK.

Are you not entertained? (Jon gasps in pleasure) This is the most joy I've gotten from an old man since Dick Cheney non-fatally shot one in the face. (wild audience cheering and applause) I mean, it's just... take more! Give me more!



CLINT EASTWOOD (8/30/2012): I'm not gonna shut up, it's my turn.

I'm gonna tell you something. Back where we work at the Daily Show on the west side of Hell's Kitchen in New York City, you don't have to go far to see an old man yelling at an inanimate object. But rarely is that object on stage at a national political convention. And almost never is that old man Oscar winner Clint Eastwood.

Not that Romney didn't get a chance to, you know, I think he talked too.



MITT ROMNEY (8/30/2012): We Americans have always felt a special kinship with the future.

And here's why it hurts. It hurt these Republicans bad, because this convention, like all conventions, is a scripted and focus-grouped fantasy, and the display of Eastwood's Gran Torino id was the very thing Republicans had constructed the entire week to suppress! This convention was the vision of a perfect America that used to exist, until Barack Obama ruined it. And so what if that America had never actually existed?



MITT ROMNEY (8/30/2012): To be an American was to assume that all things were possible. ... That unique blend of optimism, humility. ... It's that good feeling when you have more time to volunteer to coach your kid's soccer team, or help out on school trips. ... So when we see that new business opening up downtown, so when we go to work in the morning and see everybody else on the block doing the same thing. ... My friends cared more about what sports teams we followed, than what church we went to.

Yeah, that was the uncomplicated America you remember. I think in the '60s, there were some churches in Alabama that would've disagreed with your "sports team versus place of worship" anecdote.

(audience applause)

But the point is this. What this convention attempted to do is say that we could all live again in this nostalgic paradise if it weren't for this one fucking guy!



MITT ROMNEY (8/30/2012): The President has disappointed America because he hasn't led America in the right direction. TIM PAWLENTY (8/29/2012): Barack Obama's failed us. NEWT GINGRICH (8/30/2012): ... weakened America's confidence ... SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY (8/29/2012): ... diminished dreams ... MIKE HUCKABEE (8/29/2012): ... liberty-limiting, radical left-wing, anti-business, reckless spending, tax-hiking party of Barack Obama ...

Wow. In four years, one man, Barack Obama, has broken the greatest nation God has ever given this Earth. The message of this convention is that apparently up until November of 2008...

Americans lived in an utopian ideal, born of our own gumption and individual hard work, but sadly now, not four years later...

it's a blighted socialist hellspace where jack-booted thugs lock you up for thinking about Christmas!

(wild audience cheering and applause)

And here is the most incredible part of the entire fiction. While convincing us that Barack Obama's destroyed this country's future, the Republicans have also invented a past where they were trying to help him succeed!



MITT ROMNEY (8/30/2012): That choice was not the choice of our party, but Americans always come together after elections. ... I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed.

(prolonged wild audience cheering and applause)

You... wanted... Obama... to succeed?? We may not remember that America was never really Mayberry, but we sure as shit can remember back to 2009. This is the news package from Hannity's show 100 days into the Presidency.



4/27/2009: JOHN ROBERTS: So help you God? BARACK OBAMA: So help me God. JOHN ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr. President. ("O Fortuna" plays menacingly)

BILL O'REILLY (3/2/2009): The economy is so bad and so shaky, and the Obama vision has not worked at all. Zero. Now, again, it's only been six weeks, but it isn't working.

But still, 42 days is 42 days. Anybody wanna jump on the "I hope he fails" bandwagon, I dunno, eight days into his presidency?



1/28/2009: NEIL CAVUTO: Rush Limbaugh's — as you know, Governor — taken a lot of heat for saying that he does not wish this President well. MITT ROMNEY: Rush is partially right, and I'm not going to try and parse words here, but of course we don't want failed policies to succeed.

And that's where Clint Eastwood comes in. And this is where Clint Eastwood has done a huge favor to us all. Because the Republican Party's irrationality, that they've worked so hard at the convention trying to conceal, was unleashed in a 12-minute improvised avant-garde performance of One Angry Men. Eastwood finally revealed the cognitive dissonance that is the beating heart and soul and fiction of this party! He's so far gone, they're hammering Obama for things Bush did, and Romney is!



CLINT EASTWOOD (8/30/2012): But you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK. You know, I mean... you thought that was something that was worth doing. We didn't check with the Russians to see how they did there for the 10 years.

CLINT EASTWOOD (8/30/2012): See, I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president, anyway, because it...

So we owe Clint Eastwood a debt of thanks. Not only because it was a truly hilarious twelve minutes of improvised awesome in a week of scripted blah, but because it advanced our understanding.

This President has issues, and there are very legitimate debates to be had about his policies and actions, and successes and/or failures as President. I mean, (with wry smile) tune in next week. But I could never wrap my head around why the world and the President that Republicans describe, bear so little resemblance to the world and the President that I experience. And now I know why.

There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.

(wild audience cheering and applause)

And, while the President the rest of us sees has issues, apparently this President, invisible to many, is bent on our wholesale destruction.

But look, Invisible Obama's great for my business. I'm still sad Trump's not running. But if you really want to make this election about this guy?

Let me see if I can paraphrase. "Go ahead. Make my day." We'll be right back.