Rocky

The Rocky Balboa conversation over at TAPPED is all sorts of weird and wrong. I don't even know where to begin, exactly, so I'll just enie, menie, miney mo it and start... here:

GFR: "The movie came out in 1976, which is about a decade before many of Obama's young supporters were born. It seems an odd choice of reference for a candidate pitching himself as the candidate of the future."

I'm pretty sure that Barack Obama's young, male voting base wasn't confused about this metaphor at all.

Ezra: "More to the point, people forget this, but in the first movie, Rocky...lost. He got a title shot no one expected, did better than anyone could have imagined, but he lost the match. The triumph was in his very ability to go the distance."

It's worse than that, even. Rocky Balboa was a terrible amateur fighter, picked out of the ether for basically racist reasons to fight the champion, lost, then won, then lost to Clubber Lang, then beat Clubber Lang, then beat Ivan Drago, but suffered catastrophic brain damage and had to retire. Not a very distinguished career. What he has, though, is the indisputable patina of a come from behind winner, and, again, nobody, I'm sure, was confused by that.

Dana: "I've never seen Rocky. I did, however, play the film's theme song on my clarinet in seventh grade band."

You really should, Dana. It's a terrific movie, and you won't regret it.