Obama as Atticus Finch is the defender of the American mainstream - Guardian UK
Obama as Atticus Finch is the defender of the American mainstream
The president's endorsement of To Kill a Mockingbird combines his message on race with a nostalgia for small town values
Tom Shone
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 April 2012 08.41 EDT
Which of these three events, all from the last week, most clearly signalled that the US election is underway?
a) Mitt Romney's decision, on Tuesday, to pool resources with the RNC.
b) Obama's decision to call out his rival by name for the first time when addressing the Newspaper Association of America on Tuesday.
c) The president's brief televised introduction of the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird on the USA Network channel on Saturday night.
The answer, as any seasoned politico will tell you, is the third event. The first is just economics and the second is forgotten within a news cycle. But no election is complete without movie endorsements. The election of 2008, in the end, boiled down to a battle of the Brandos: on the one hand, Marlon Brando making us an offer we couldn't refuse in The Godfather (Obama's favourite film), versus Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! (John McCain's favourite film) making us an offer you couldn't quite understand, in a thick Mexican accent. Nothing told you more about the way the election was going than that face-off between the stealthy and the florid.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/08/obama-atticus-finch-us-elections
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