The Coen Brothers and John McCain Connection

On November 4th, the voters of these United States of America decided that this was "No Country For Old Men" instead of "Raising Arizona". While it's true that Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden is 65, Biden would not have been running the country, unlike the last occupant of the office of the Vice Presidency. So the country chose not to raise John McCain, Senator from Arizona, and his running mate, Sarah Palin, with the accent straight out of "Fargo".

Let's look at a few of the connections between John McCain and the Coen Brothers, besides Raising Arizona and Fargo. In the Academy Award winning No Country For Old Men, one of the stars was Josh Brolin. The same Josh Brolin who recently opened in Oliver Stone's "W". So, in effect, Brolin was going from McCain to Bush as John McCain was trying to follow Bush into the office of President of the United States.

Secondly, the other star of No Country For Old Men was Tommy Lee Jones, who roomed with 2000 Democratic nominee for President and former Vice President Al Gore in the 60's at Harvard.

Another Coen brothers film was O Brother Where Art Thou, which came to mind when John McCain in a recent rally called upon his ubiquitous sidekick Joe "the plumber" to take the stage, only to find that Joe Wurzelbacher was nowhere to be found. "Joe, are you here?" "Joe, where are you?" "Is Joe here?" "Well, you're all Joe the plumber!" McCain said to the crowd, looking quite sheepish. The Coen brothers film, The Man Who Wasn't There also comes to mind.

In O Brother Where Art Thou, Charles Durning played the Governor of Mississippi, a man his opponent said lacked "the moral fiber" to be Governor. Durning's character retorted with a snort "I practically invented moral fiber!" Sound like modern Presidential campaigns?

To top it off, the GOP Convention in early September took place in St. Paul, Minnesota, twin to Minneapolis, home of the Coen brothers and where much of Fargo was set...

I suppose the "Glen" character from Raising Arizona would be Idaho Senator Larry Craig. Glen was Nicolas Cage's H.I. McDunnough character's boss who was bluntly rebuffed after an inappropriate sexual advance, although Glen was heterosexual.

The characters of Joe Sixpack and Joe "the plumber" would have to be the Snoats brothers, Gale and Evelle, played by John Goodman and William Forsythe, the pair who didn't escape from prison, they "released ourselves on our own recognizance". In the end of course, the Snoats brothers prove to be their own downfall and nearly take H.I. down with them.

I don't believe Joe "the plumber" plunged John McCain down the drain, it's unlikely that anything could have won this race for McCain with the economy in the state that it's in and all. What Joe did was trivialize the campaign, basically reducing John McCain to a rambling old man.