Screw Conservative Talk Show Hosts for Spoiling this Movie **SPOILERS**
Okay, so this is a bit of a dated rant, but I was just reminded of this.
So when this movie first came out I was carpooling with someone who listened to conservative talk radio. I distinctly remember one morning one of the hosts (it was michael smerconish or sean hannity or one of their clones) was ranting about the ending to this movie. Mind you, this was when the movie was still in theaters. The host was ranting about the ending and how this movie was liberal hollywood glorifying/normalizing euthanasia.
When I finally saw the film when it was released on home video I remember feeling like it was a well-produced depressing drama, but nothing special considering its status as a best picture winner.
Flash-forward to today and I'm listening to something where someone describes how shockingly blindsided and gutted they were by the end of this movie. It truly made me realize how much I missed out on by having the ending to this film spoiled for me by aforementioned *beep* head talk show host. I never really thought about how shocking of a turn in the story the injury/assisted-suicide would be if you weren't expecting it. It really does go against conventional hollywood story structure and is a turn (as far as I know) no mainstream hollywood sports film ever took (despite being a realistic outcome for an athlete).
Now, I don't mean to make this political. I know that liberal Rosie O'Donnell notoriously spoiled the ending to Fight Club on her show, but I just don't have the same personal beef with her there because I wasn't watching her show to have that movie spoiled by her. But really, that incident is probably more of an exception to the rule. Conservative talk show hosts are so obsessed with the idea that Hollywood is indoctrinating people with this radical liberal agenda, that they think nothing of spoiling a highly acclaimed landmark film while it's still in the theaters to try to prove that point. That's just a repugnant thing to do regardless of politics. And what do you know, 10 years later filmmaker Clint Eastwood is publicly stumping against a popular incumbent democratic president (not that there's anything wrong with that, that's his prerogative). It turns out maybe Clint wasn't a wild liberal trying to indoctrinate america but he was *gasp* a creative filmmaker trying to explore difficult themes and morally challenging situations for the sake of telling a good story.
Conservatives (ironically, especially the ones in the media) are obsessed with this conspiracy that hollywood is this giant entity trying to indoctrinate people with a radical liberal agenda. When the reality is that the entertainment industry is an industry like any other, but it has a naturally liberal bias because pursuing the coveted high-ranking creative positions require a tremendously high level risk when it comes to financial/job stability. And liberals are naturally more likely to be risk-takers, while conservatives are more likely to favor traditional paths. It's the same reason that there's a naturally conservative bias among corporate and financial white-collar executives. It's not some wild mass conspiracy, though someone with that mindset could see everything as evidence of such a conspiracy.
I know this is a long rant, but it just annoys me to no end that conservative talkers are so obsessed with their liberal hollywood conspiracy theories that they can't think of anything else to fill their show hours with and will spoil significant films as collateral damage, even while they're still in the theaters. Freedom of speech is a great gift, the ability to express one's opinion is a great thing. But goddamn anyone who's going to use their platform to spoil landmark movies for people before they even have the chance to see them.