Three Ways of Looking at Jack Nicholson

But it's not all about traditional TV campaign ads this morning. Jack Nicholson released this endorsement montage for Hillary Clinton a couple days ago:

A few thoughts:

* Old People Have the YouTube Channel Too! The ad's jokey and probably not particularly strategic, but in a real way, it's also playing to Clinton's base. There's probably no more seminal Baby Boomer figure than Jack, unless you count Dennis Hopper, and he's apparently busy with all those retirement ads. There's a note of striking back at all those Yes We Can whippersnappers here. On the other hand, Nicholson is also the eminence grise of Hollywood white men, so the video flicks at a group Clinton's been losing to Obama in recent primaries. Which brings us to...

* ...the irony. For all I know Nicholson in his personal life is an upstanding open-minded individual who works tirelessly for the empowerment of women. But it's undeniably ironic that he happens to be associated with a long string of misogynistic characters in movies--including, weirdly, some of the same characters in this montage. (Again, I'm talking about the characters, not the actor or the movies themselves.) You can understand why they left out any Nurse Ratched scenes, though. And speaking of A Few Good Men...

* ... between the quote from that movie, the fact that The West Wing's Matt Santos was apparently based on Obama, and the whole Studio 60-ness of the recent SNL factor in the election, it is becoming clear: Aaron Sorkin is writing this election. God help us all.