MovieChat Forums > Viva Zapata! (1952) Discussion > This is John McCain's favorite movie.

This is John McCain's favorite movie.


Sort of weird, ain't it?

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And George H.W. Bush named his company 'Zapata Corporation' after the film! Pretty ironic!


"Jai Guru Deva, Om"

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Haha, yes very! I think he is missing the point somewhat!

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If I was voting on tastes in movies, I would have to go with McCain. Obama goes with the super safe choices like Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather. But McCain actually has somewhat developed film tastes.

Unfortunately for J-Mac, however, I am voting on issues.

Obama-Biden 2008!

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zyxek

How's that hope and change working out for ya? Still working?

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Obama has tried to improve helath care, as promised, but made the mistake of trusting congress to set the terms initially, which was a disastrous tactical error. He has made good foreign policy decisions and improved our standing with many of our allies, and not incited any new conflicts. The stimulus package created some new jobs, but unemployment rate still had to bottom out. I never expected him to work magic on the economy, doesn't have much to do with the economy.

I'd say his first 13 months have been mediocre. If anything, it's the same safeness and caution that led him to cite consensus classics as his favorites to play everything as diplomatically as possible in his first year. But I still have faith that he can be a good president, and I'd like to think he's grown through his early failures (none of which have been Bay of Pigs level disasters). I'm not giving up on the guy just yet.

But McCain, who could barely manage a campaign, let alone a country, would have been an awful president. I stand by that opinion, and my vote in '08.

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Au contraire: socialized health care is not an improvement. Obama's drones are killing Americans and innocent people, and are an act of war against Pakistan. The U.S. continues to violently interfere everywhere on the planet. Egypt; Libya; Mali; Iran; Yemen, etc. Federal spending and debt are skyrocketing. He is against freedom (NDAA; Guantanamo; gun control; Obamacare; growing federal secrecy; increasing surveillance: 20,000 drones to be in the skies over the U.S.)--but then every politician (except those few who roll back the state) is against liberty. Did you know that several federal gov't agencies (DHS, etc.) have recently purchased more than a billion .40 hollow-point rounds? The Constitution is essentially dead, Obama a dictator. There is much more. He's worse than George W. Bush because his administration is increasing the size, power, scope, and unaccountability of Leviathan, yet there's very little substantial difference between the parties.

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You're right on everything you just said except the healthcare part. Socialized healthcare would be excellent. Unfortunately that's not even close to what Obama has been doing, binding people to private insurance companies that profit off people's illness. Socialized healthcare would be the private companies being nationalized and healthcare being provided by the public wealth. Obamacare is a right-wing "compromise" the purpose of which is to get people to stop demanding actual healthcare. So the Dems can say "well hey, we tried and this is what we got, so shut up and be happy with it". It provides a thin veneer of superficial reform, one or two good things, in order to pacify the Dems' voter base while leaving the basic original system intact. Not only intact but more entrenched than ever. This plan was originally drawn up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation in the 1980s and championed by right-wing Republicans in the 1990s for the same reason back then, to prevent actual public healthcare and leave the for-profit companies intact.

Obama is a right-wing Reaganite neoliberal who believes in the "free market solution" to all the world's problems. Namely, entrusting the solution of the problems to the very people that cause the problems in the first place: the self-interested capitalist oligarchy that owns both of the right-wing establishment parties in the United States.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Goethe

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A conservative Republican saying that a movie about a peasant revolutionary, fighting the existing conservative, rich power structure in Mexico, is his favorite movie, is ironic to say the least.

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Not really. Listen to Brando's speech towards the end of the movie again. A strong people do not need strong men to lead them.

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Obama hated VIVA ZAPATA. "Sure," he said, "my Uncle Frank used to love this movie because he and his pals in the Party thought it left-wing, but if you glorify a bunch of rebels fighting for liberty, it could give the serfs the wrong idea."

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And where did you dig up this quote?

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

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It's in Obama's academic records.

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Where, I want to read it for myself. And how did you get to read his "academic records"?

Nothing is more beautiful than...

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The usual; they think they know something wonderful, but usually its all worthless. Bilwick never came back cuz it is a gutless fancifier.

Let it be unsaid: insignificance is the locus of true increpation.

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Movie taste should have nothing to do with your political position. Maybe he just thinks it is a very well-made and enjoyable film for him. He doesn't have to agree with it politically.

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I understand that Zapata was a personal hero of Bobby Darin.

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McCain only called this his favorite because he wanted to show he was a hip and happening guy. This isnt the kind of movie Republicans like. They are simplistic, Bible thumping racists who would only be interested in the kinds of guns used in this movie.

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And his Favorite Musician is Frank Zappa

Viva Zapata Zappa

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Hey! You guys don't know John McCain. This indeed may be his favorite movie and it has nothing to do with being hip.

Oh that magic feeling -- nowhere to go.

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VIVA ZAPATA is about rebelling against the government. A good part of the GOP is opposed to government's growth. In that sense VIVA ZAPATA is a right wing anarchist film.

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Horse sh!t. The GOP is against government when it's helping poor people with social welfare programs. They have no problem with the government building the most gigantic military machine in world history, waging wars all over the planet to protect and expand the interests of the capitalist oligarchy that owns the government, spying on the population, oppressing women and LGBTs, torturing prisoners, and so on and so forth. In those cases, they love government, they want government, they want big, huge, massive government (the US does more military spending than the rest of the planet combined! Where are the Republicans calling out "big government" when it comes to that???). They only hate government if it's providing healthcare to the poor or raising the minimum wage or doing anything else that benefits the workers and the poor rather than the owners and the rich. They believe the one and only role of government is to serve the interests of the ruling class, which intrinsically clash with the interests of the vast majority of the world's people, the workers and farmers of the world. The Republicans oppose "big government" in the sense that they oppose the government restraining the ability of the exploiting classes to exercise maximum tyranny over the exploited classes.

There's nothing right-wing about Emiliano Zapata and his rebellion. He wasn't just fighting "the government" but the economic interests it represents. The propertied class, the exploiters, the big landowners who deprived the peasants of their land. The American political spectrum is so obscenely far to the right that most US-Americans cannot possibly understand Latin American revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata, what they fought for and what they fought against. Zapata was fighting against exactly the same sort of economic interests that the Republicans represent, where a rich few own everything and leave the working people with nothing.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Goethe

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No, it is a left-wing anarchist film. The Zapatistas are against the government favoring the rich and powerful. The GOP is against the government favoring the poor and oppressed.

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