In fairness, that chair was asking for it, and that teleprompter’s lookin’ squirrely.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Clint Eastwood — already well-established as an old man meme — ad-libbed a speech at the Republican National Convention last night. Not only did it not go quite as well convention organizers probably had hoped, but Clint’s oldest old man to ever old routine may have firmly established him as the internet’s favorite grumpy old man. Sorry, Wilford Brimley.
In fact, to look at the internet’s reaction to the Clint Eastwood speech, you’d think he argued with a chair for hours and then kicked a puppy. But that’s just the internet being hyperbolic as always. Clint Eastwood only argued with a chair for a few minutes and I’m sure he merely grazed that puppy.
“What are we going to do about grandpa?”
Hell, I didn’t even think it was that bad of a speech, considering it was ad-libbed, but there was still plenty to poke fun at, and the internet has not been slacking in that regard. I’m a little surprised Eastwood’s mention that a lawyer shouldn’t be president has been mostly ignored (Romney attended Harvard Law, as Obama did). On the other hand, the other parts of the speech (particularly the invisible Obama in a chair) have made for much better comedy. Case in point, @InvisibleObama is already on Twitter:
The argument with the chair has also inspired a Twitter hashtag, #Eastwooding, in which people post a picture of themselves arguing with a chair, like so:
Perhaps the best reaction came from President Barack Obama himself, who tweeted this from his verified Twitter account:
It’s going to be hard to top that one, but continue to the next page to see the people who tried.
This isn’t the real Chris Rock, but it did make me laugh.
“Clint Eastwood Talking To A Chair” the song, by Jonathan Mann:
And here’s the speech that inspired it all…