{"id":1148,"date":"2012-03-21T21:02:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T15:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2012-03-21T21:02:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T15:02:12","slug":"does-sarah-palin-know-where-germany-is-and-a-shout-out-for-mark-leyners-new-novel-the-sugar-frosted-nutsack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/21\/does-sarah-palin-know-where-germany-is-and-a-shout-out-for-mark-leyners-new-novel-the-sugar-frosted-nutsack\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Sarah Palin Know Where Germany Is? and a Shout-Out for Mark Leyner's new novel, "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack""},"content":{"rendered":"

So last night I caught HBO’s film Game Change<\/em>, 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<\/em> (about the 2000 election and debacle in Florida) and Too Big To Fail<\/em> (about the 2008 financial meltdown) both being excellent films, and stylistically\/thematically similar to Game Change.<\/em> 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\u2014or at least embarrassed by how badly his campaign veered from his principles.
\nAnd this morning I was thrilled to see that Mark Leyner has a new novel coming out soon, titled The Sugar Frosted Nutsack<\/em>. I’m a Leyner fan and consider him one of the wackiest, funniest contemporary fiction writers around. The Tetherballs of Bougainville<\/em> (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.
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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, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,18,25,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-booksfilm","category-good-tv","category-politics","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}