{"id":2313,"date":"2007-03-12T14:36:42","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T19:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2007-03-12T14:36:42","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T19:36:42","slug":"fred-freakin-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=2313","title":{"rendered":"Fred Freakin&#8217; Thompson?!?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the ex-senator and cranky character actor is considering running for president.  Vanity Fair&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/politics\/blogs\/wolcott\/2007\/03\/caught_fred_tho.html\" target=\"_blank\">James Wolcott<\/a> describes him perfectly as, &#8220;&#8230; a grumpy old dog farting on the front porch.&#8221;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI have to say, my Wife and I like Law and Order &#8211; we watch it opportunistically rather than fanatically &#8211; and this looks like good news for us.  If he decides to run, he&#8217;ll almost certainly be leaving and taking my least favorite character with him.  On the show he alternates between down-home-folksy and corporate-lawyer-smarmy with neck-wrenching rapidity, to the point where both attitudes seem to be poses.  He&#8217;ll adopt whatever approach seems most likely to get him what he wants.<\/p>\n<p>That <em>is<\/em> just his character though, and we can&#8217;t blame an actor for the way his character is written.  Still, from what I&#8217;ve seen of his interview clips, the character may be an improvement over Thompson&#8217;s actual persona.  It&#8217;s almost enough to make you nostalgic for the late Walter Mondale&#8217;s infamous &#8220;Norwegian charisma.&#8221;  Thompson may be eight years younger than McCain but he comes off as a decade older.  He&#8217;s the archetypal cranky old man, impatient and intolerant.  At any moment you expect him to have a fit and start yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off of his property &#8211; which is, I suppose, just a different episode of lawn order&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the ex-senator and cranky character actor is considering running for president. Vanity Fair&#8217;s James Wolcott describes him perfectly as, &#8220;&#8230; a grumpy old dog farting on the front porch.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}