Bob Roberts isn’t interested in debating you. The film, a vicious satire of the aw-shucks, just-like-you conservative movement of the 1980’s to the early 2000’s, marks out a clear target early and often. It tells you that the bad guys are the politicians who pretend to be simple folks from the heartland, but who are actually financiers whose oligarchical class loyalty supersedes any cultural affiliation they perform for voters. It paints a picture of a conservative movement in thrall to a shadowy donor class and a menacing series of war criminals and imperial schemers. It’s a cartoonish, over-the-top portrait of a political movement utterly devoid of any sort of morality or sense of responsibility. Bob Roberts, as a film, sits somewhere between biting satire and furious polemical, borne out of an ardently sincere leftism.
Naturally, it was mostly ignored or panned when it came out. The film was like something out of a parody of late-period Spike Lee, too ridiculous to even comment on reality. Sure, politicians like George Bush lied, but so do all politicians. Cheney seemed like a creepy guy, but he was more or less a solid Vice President, right? It was the paranoid hippies, the ones scared of “The Man” just mouthing off again.
But now we know that the film was far more accurate than parodic. Bob Roberts is a film for the age of Trump, and for a GOP more devoted to white nationalism than any sense of personal or political responsibility. When the Republican-controlled Congress has passed a massive tax cut for the oligarch class while trying to cut welfare payments, and when new foreign adventurism is more popular than responsibly ending the decades-long imperial wars in which the US is already engaged, a satire that is clear about the emptiness at the heart of conservatism reads more like prophecy than parody.
Still, when most of us look back on popular culture of the past few decades, we tend to overlook films like Bob Roberts—the mainstream consensus of the time has ossified around these films as forgettable products of the leftist fringe. Michael Moore, shrill propagandist though he might be, has proven a more insightful prognosticator than the entire CNN lineup of pundits, who thought that the GOP would act responsibly in 2016… and 2017, and 2018. And Bob Roberts, with a title character who arguably fakes his own assassination attempt, had a better sense of the importance of the grift to the conservative project than ‘serious’ commentators like Bill Kristol.
This has been true for decades—the hippies who called Nixon a traitor have been proven to be nearer to the mark than the responsible broadcasters like Cronkite or Murrow were willing to admit. (Nixon, of course, sabotaged the 1968 US-North Vietnam peace talks to improve his election chances.) Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran and funded the Contras in Nicaragua (the colonel who went to jail as a consequence of the investigation into the Iran-Contra affair, Oliver North, is currently the head of the NRA). Bob Roberts is a film that’s clear-eyed about these issues—Alan Rickman plays a character who’s halfway between North and Cheney.
Somehow, though, the fact that the hippie fringe has historically been more clear-eyed about the nature of the conservative movement hasn’t penetrated much of the mainstream discourse. That should change, especially as the current government—not just Trump—makes it clear that Bob Roberts has a better grasp of the right than Brian Williams or Chuck Todd has ever demonstrated.
Safe Views: Alexa Valarezo on microaggressions
This guest column is a part of our Safe Views series, where Transy students share their views on how they feel safe, and unsafe, on Transy’s campus. Student writers responded to the question, “Do you feel safe on Transy’s campus?” and they approached that question from a variety of perspectives and viewpoints. This guest column is written by sophomore Alexa Valarezo.
It’s my sophomore year here, and I can’t really tell you that I feel safe here. Maybe I’m in the wrong. Yes, we have a new crosswalk and signs up on how to conquer it, but me not getting hit by a car doesn’t take into account the emotional weight that comes with being at Transy. The world around us is full of violence and hatred and we may be in the Transy bubble, but this bubble is full of pain. I want to be very clear, however, that there is a lot of good here and a lot of bad that isn’t malicious.
I am a Latina woman. The way in which I interact on Transy’s campus is through my identity, and before Transy I never realized how alone I felt. Yesterday, while I was at a diversity and inclusion training focused around microaggressions, I thought of all the things I’d experienced in life that weren’t meant to be aggressive and damaging, but were. A lot of those things happened before life at Transy, but one of the worst happened here. One that was detrimental to the enjoyment of my first year here, one that changed my comfort on campus, one that I won’t ever forget.
It was during Taste of Lexington my freshman year and there was a taco truck outside the campus center, and, as most people are, I was on the hunt for the best tacos in Lexington. The man taking my order had been speaking Spanish to the cook behind him, so I decided to speak to him in Spanish. I rarely get the opportunity to speak in Spanish, because I live away from my family. The second I turned around to get some beignets from the doodles truck another member of my graduating class who I was friends with spoke at me, “Gosh, speak some English would ya.” I’d be lying if I said that I felt hurt at the time, because I didn’t. I was furious, and yet I said nothing and brushed it off. I didn’t officially report. It did end up turning into a disciplinary case because of mandatory reporting, but I sat through the whole case hearing my own character get slaughtered for what felt like eternity. The consequences for the perpetrator was attending some type of specific class/training, and I was to receive no contact.
I’m not really sure what kind of consequences this person deserved, but I know that nothing would have felt like enough. It changed my habits on campus. Even now, I still feel slightly uncomfortable speaking in Spanish around campus. The dust has settled, but I definitely haven’t fully healed. I don’t really know if I ever will. Because of that experience I can’t say I feel safe on campus, because the feelings I have towards it now are just pain because in trying to express myself I was demeaned. Safety, is the privilege to be yourself. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to do that here.
I hope that with the many efforts around campus to improve diversity and inclusion that these feelings will have gone away. To some extent they have. What people need to realize is that it isn’t just what is said to your face that creates these feelings of marginalization, but it’s the seemingly positive comments, the microaggressions, the looks or stares, and even the ‘innocent’ questions. It’s the resentment and pain of not having agency to speak up or feeling like no one is listening to your experience that contributes to not feeling safe here.