Couldn't Stand...


Couldn't Cherie Blair. She came off as very arrogant and unlikeable.

I also really didn't like Alastair Campbell. He came off as slimy and heartless.

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Well, the real Cherie Blair was raised in the single parent, working class family in Liverpool. To have graduated top of her class in law at LSE probably says more about her than a plot device intended to create drama in a film.
BTW, she's accepted several honors that come direct from the Crown, so she's not that against the Monarchy.

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Tony Blair's wife was humorous; so should we.

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I came here to say the same thing! I kept wondering if she was really that cynical and anti-monarchy in real life. Seems odd to me to have the position of a PM's wife while hating the institution you represent...
Sort of reminds me of the Obama's.

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Since Blair was elected - kind of - by the direct vote of the British people, I believe it's quite reasonable to think that a Labour PM's wife would be anti-monarchy. After all, Labour is supposedly the Left, and the PM is supposed to represent the actual British people. The monarchy, for those who want to believe, represent the ideal of the British people, a good role model for every British citizen to try to emulate. Of course, it's still a democratic country, so you don't have to believe on all that crap if you don't want to.

Like Cherie Blair said on the movie, she's not surprised that Tony suddenly turned into a rabid defender of the crown, as all PMs seem to fall in love for the monarch the minute they become PM. I guess they just don't want to become known, on History books, as the sitting PM when the monarchy finally ends. And it will end, probably by the hands of one of Diana's sons - and in my personal opinion, it should end.

You probably won't agree with me, as your statement about the Obamas clearly shows your bias toward the Right. The Obamas represent the actual American people, and to say that they hate the American people is utter nonsense, even for people on the Right. Let's remember that, when Obama was about to become elected, Sarah Palin came out saying that there's a "real America" that votes for conservatives like herself, and then there's the "fake America" represented by the majority of people living in big cities and inevitably supporting more liberal ideas.

When Michelle Obama said that for the first time in her life she was proud to be an American, that doesn't mean she hated the American people. If the majority of the people of your country see no problem with racism, xenophobia, social and economical injustice, corruption, bigotry, homophobia, sexism and diplomatic hypocrisy... well, then I guess it's only natural not to be proud of said country. Loving your own country no matter what, no matter the atrocities committed by your government or your people, is what you were supposed to do under Hitler or Mussolini. Not in democracies.

So, to summarize (too late, I know): 1) Cherie Blair was OK in my book, representing the non-privileged Briton's average opinion about the archaic institution of monarchy; 2) I really like Sheen's work, and he almost made me like Tony Blair, but in the end, the movie showed him like he probably is - kind of a good guy, with good intentions, but who ends up doing terrible things in order to appease his critics both in the Left and in the Right, too bad so many people died in Iraq because he prefers to see the world changing with small steps, if ever, like conservatives do; 3) by now you must be thinking I'm one of those guys that blindly bashes on the monarchy, completely ignoring whatever good it might have brought to mankind in the past, and that it might still be bringing today to the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden - this is not the case. As an agnostic, I recognize the positive things brought about by Christianity, be it Catholicism or Protestantism. But unlike the faithful, I do not ignore the terrible things brought about by them, and I reserve my right to dream about a world with less organized religion, as I believe we don't need them as much as we did, say, five centuries ago. That's the same reasoning I apply to judging the monarchy's contribution to the world today. We all know republics aren't perfect, but monarchy today is just becoming too silly to respect.

And to finalize, Michelle Obama is one of the brightest First-Ladies the US has ever had, probably the first self-made woman who wasn't just a shadow of her husband. Like Barack himself often says, she's probably much smarter than him and would have been a better president. If you were able to look past your blind partisan anger, you should be able to realize that, as you should be able to realize that her husband becoming president sent a positive message to the whole world - a message you guys on the right relentless tried to destroy over the past 8 years. And it's the same message that the myth of Lady Di carried on its shoulders - a message that says that the world is a fair place, and everybody has a chance of doing something great and helping the human kind move forward.

If you ask me, I'll take this utopian message any day, over what your side is offering, i.e. keep Mexicans and Muslims out, let poor people die because they're all idiots. The world keeps evolving yet you guys on the right still can't understand why you're always less popular than your adversaries. It's simple - you're offering a segregated world filled with hate, while the other side is offering something slightly less terrible.

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Let's all agree to keep signatures apart from text body?

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Of the Obama's what?

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Nothing to see here, move along.

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She's a Catholic in a "modern liberal democracy" that still discriminates on the basis of religion *by law*. That would bother me too. The U.K. Anti-Catholic laws are no better than anti Christian ones in the Muslim world as far as sense is concerned.

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Helen McCrory is superb as Cherie.

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