A hopefully better take on a bad take on Election

The re-review 25 Years Later, Alexander Payne’s Election Remains as Relevant as Ever by Daniel Joyaux (Roger Ebert.com) writes the following about the movie Election.

“The elephant in the room when talking about “Election” is Hillary Clinton, in that comparing her (and others) to Tracy Flick over the years has become a sort of code for calling a woman a robotic, success-obsessed ambition machine who needs to stay in her lane. Like Jim McCallister, people saw Clinton’s Flick-like ambition as almost an existential threat, something that had to be stopped at all costs. And we see this outsized reaction to female ambition repeated over and over with women who reach the top of American cultural relevance: whether it’s Kamala Harris and Taylor Swift, AOC and Beyoncé, Elizabeth Warren and Lady Gaga, or Serena Williams and Anne Hathaway, they all seem subject to constant barrages of scrutiny that men in comparable positions rarely receive. They’re all Tracy Flicks in a world of Jim McCallisters.”

Oh bullshit. Just cmon. Hillary Clinton is a monster. She was criticized not because she was a woman but because she’s a calculating, scheming, narcissist asshole. She never cared about anyone more than herself and her career. This is just like Tracey Flick, actually. She very clearly didn’t care about anything but getting elected. For herself. What did she plan to do with her position? Who cares? The important thing is to get into the position. The author completely missed the point of Flick’s character.

“That so many people watch “Election” and not only sympathize with Jim’s viciousness but seem to view it as the correct—even necessary— response to Tracy’s try-hard ambition is, ummm, not great, Bob.”

Neither of them is a good person. Stop defending Flick. Tracy didn’t have a “try-hard ambition”, she had “do-anything-to-get-ahead ambition”. There’s a difference. That the author can’t tell the difference is, in her words, “ummm, not great, Bob.”

“The piece talked about Flick as “a kind of test for American attitudes toward women who dared to aim high,” questioning whether the seemingly inevitable ascendancy of the first female President (one who went to Yale, just like the students that inspired Tom Perotta to create Tracy Flick in the first place) meant “the specter of Tracy Flick was vanquished.””

This is so braindead. Hillary Clinton was a senator from the one of the richest and most power states in the union. She was secretary of state. She destroyed Libya and laughed about it. She is one of the elites. She has been for decades. She is not a downtrodden minority worthy of anyone’s pity or admiration. The whining about lack of recognition is just so incredible. It’s like you can never honor certain people enough. And any attempt to call them out on their obvious flaws—if not for being flat-out evil—is shoved aside as slander for purely identitarian reasons.

Just look at the litany of people she listed above as also unfairly maligned:

“[…] Kamala Harris and Taylor Swift, AOC and Beyoncé, Elizabeth Warren and Lady Gaga, or Serena Williams and Anne Hathaway […]”

Taylor Swift? Really? She’s a billionaire. While Beyoncé might not personally be a billionaire, she’s about halfway there—and her husband is probably a billionaire. Elizabeth Warren? Very wealthy, but not as wealthy as her husband, who owns the 23andme scam. She’s a senator, though. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her because some people say mean things about her? Serena Williams? The poor thing never gets any recognition. How can anyone defend Kamala Harris? Because she’s a woman? Why? She’s a terrible person with terrible ideas who’s always used whatever power she got to screw over people with less power. Just like Hillary Clinton, but much less successfully.

“[…] all it took was one more glimpse of her in the flesh for that hatred to return, more powerful than ever.”

What a breathtakingly bad read of the film. Mcallister was angry that this amoral creature was destined for greatness in politics. Just like Clinton. Just because Mcallister is also a petty person doesn’t mean he wasn’t right about Flick. Idiots like this reviewer are so wrapped up in identity that they forget that it’s possible to dislike someone based on substance.