INSTILLED STEREOTYPES.

Yesterday I was going from one TV channel to the other when, by chance, I bumped into the movie "Recount"; as you all may have figured out, the movie is about the exceptional events that took place in the 2000 elections.

I remember I was in Italy when news started to arrived hinting at a certain irregularity in the process as well as the impossibility to have a winner. Now, I personally preferred Bush over the pandering, starchy, Al Gore. I always had the feeling the man was holding his breath and I didn't feel he was the right choice; however, a defeat by such a narrow margin would have been tempting for anyone, and I respect his right to call for a recount. That is not the issue here.

What really bothered me in that film is the subtle and surreptitious instilling of stereotypes it aimed to achieve. I only saw the last twenty minutes and I think I saw enough:

The democrats had a modest office where documents seemed to be scattered all over the place. The staff was always in team mood with a monolithic behaviour. At the end, Gore's right hand man walks his way to a battered, small private jet; while Bush's campaign chief arrives in a Lincoln town car ready to board a brand new plane. Previously we had seen the same character using an assistant or telephone operator to make a call. Hollywood or whomever produced the film did it again: equate the republicans with a party of opulent, selfish fat cats, while the democrats are just a bunch of humble middle class idealists.

Once again, the process that led Bush to the White House may have been marred by irregularities, but the democrats are just as opulent, rich and greedy as their republican counterpart; actually Wall Street is to the democrats what big oil is to the republicans regardless of how many threats and derogatory remarks Mr. Obama throws at them.

America may be in need of a new political breed, or probably the two party system is at its end, but I would feel more comfortable if the liberal artists gave up their ideological allegiance to the left and started looking at the truth in the eye.