Howard Beale = Howard Dean?

[ringmastery]

This is what I heard some people compare Dean's speech to.

http://www.uttyler.edu/meidenmuller/mp3clips/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork2.mp3

[LiberalBushFan]

1. uncanny n/m

[IndianaGreen]

2. Ahhh, but Howard Beale resonated with the public

and they got up and went to their windows, opened them, and shouted "I am mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore!"

[Feanorcurufinwe]

3. I did that and my neighbors called the cops on me.

[ringmastery]

4. another great speech from that movie

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork4.html

[Metrix]

6. Howard Beale wasn't real

Where is the comparison?

[joefree1]

8. Well at the end of the movie Beale got shot

And we've all seen Dean take plenty of verbal bullets.

[AP]

5. I hate that movie.

Realism is about the last thing I care about in a movie. However, the premise of this movie is that a radical black power group get their own TV show (and then become really materialistic).

I found it so distractingly unbelievable that network TV would give black radicals a voice. It's criticism of TV was the OPPOSITE of the real problem with TV, which is that it would NEVER EVER give a voice to that kind of radicalism because it's to critical of everything about TV.

And the movie also proceeds to mock liberals which is like a turn of the knife once they have it firmly embedded in their little smoke an mirrors verion of the reality of the TV industry.

[andym]

7. We don't want to go there

The fictional Howard Beale was the only truth-teller in a totally corrupt media corporation and he angrily proclaimed the truth to an addled American public. But he was also in the process of undergoing a mental breakdown.

In contrast,Howard Dean has been strongly criticizing Bush to the delight of many, he is a truth teller and he is passionate and angry at times. The potential to link him to Beale exists. However Howard Dean is a sane man.

Therefore Dean shouldn't be compared to Beale. It will paint him forever as unstable, and all fair-minded Americans should come to his defense to prevent it. He is not insane, and the implication that he is destructive to him as a human being and to the American political process.

Let me say that he is not my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but this is just unfair.

That said, he'll have to do the heavy lifting himself to get out of this mess, hopefully by showing a little self-deprecating humor on national TV.