Last Man Standing – Politics, Texas Style
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Documentary: B
In Texas, with the Bush Dynasty so strong, you know that
the feeling of Republicans and their popularity runs high down there. Without going into gerrymandering and other
controversies, a Texas variation of nationalism is huge. The question is, can any Republican do
anything so wrong that they could actually lose and election in such friendly
turf? Paul Stekler’s Last Man
Standing – Politics, Texas Style (2004) offers this scenario in one of the
most interesting such situations you could ask for.
Rick Green is a republican who loves to proudly claim he
is a “right wing nut” and has the support of his party big time. He even managed to get Charlton Heston to do
an ad for him calling him a great “patriot” and he keeps wearing his religion
(some bizarre variant of real Christianity, as part of the hijackers of said
religion) on his sleeve. It turns out
he is part of a scandal involving a ponzi scheme of false profits, unethical
loans, misuse of a public office and an infomercial promoting a drug!
Running against Green was Patrick Rose, who was willing to
be the newcomer and travel tirelessly allover the state to beat Green,
including constant reminders of Green’s record while offering his more
beneficial ideas that would help more people instead of the increasingly narrow
special interests that are coning people into voting against their own best
interests and the best interests of the country. It is a program that runs just under an hour and was on the PBS
series P.O.V., which is extremely efficient, entertaining and to the
point of the battle and its amusing results.
It is a fine program and one of the best political documentaries of the
current cycle of anti-Bush/pro-Democracy (not just Democrat) pieces of pure
journalism that is serving as a vital, priceless record about what is going
wrong in the United States. Last Man
Standing – Politics, Texas Style is just a microcosm of ugly battles to
come and will voters continued to be fooled by rhetoric.
The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image was shot on videotape for
the most part and looks good, if not great, with some detail limits. The color is consistent and source clean
otherwise. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
is at least as good, but does not have any surrounds, even including the
music. Extras include brief text on the
PBS series P.O.V. and a weblink update on what happened to the players
in the program. Be sure to catch this
one.
- Nicholas Sheffo
