Does Sarah Palin Know Where Germany Is? and a Shout-Out for Mark Leyner's new novel, "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack"

So last night I caught HBO’s film Game Change, about Sarah Palin’s (improbable? nightmarish? absurd?) role as John McCain’s veep in the 2008 election, and it’s surprisingly good. Why surprisingly? I’m not a huge fan of biopics/reenactments of contemporary events, though HBO actually has a good track record in that genre, with Recount (about the 2000 election and debacle in Florida) and Too Big To Fail (about the 2008 financial meltdown) both being excellent films, and stylistically/thematically similar to Game Change. At one point it shows McCain’s (and the GOP’s, it implies) foreign policy advisors coaching Palin, pointing to a map and saying, “This is Germany.” It’s funny, painful, and fascinating all at once. Julianne Moore makes you sympathize with Palin, too, as a person in way over her head, not all of her own doing. Woody Harrelson is the other major player in the film, as one of McCain’s advisors/strategists in charge of coaching Palin, who at one point says to another advisor, “I haven’t even told John that she doesn’t know anything.” Ed Harris does a good job playing McCain, too, and actually makes McCain seem more likable, and even honorable—or at least embarrassed by how badly his campaign veered from his principles.
And this morning I was thrilled to see that Mark Leyner has a new novel coming out soon, titled The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. I’m a Leyner fan and consider him one of the wackiest, funniest contemporary fiction writers around. The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1997) is my favorite book, with a long rant about New Jersey’s State Discretionary Execution policy that made me laugh till it hurt. Somehow I think Sarah Palin as possible President of the USA and Mark Leyner with a new novel (his first in 15 years) in the same blog makes weird sense.

This entry was posted in books, books/film, Good TV, Politics, writing. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *