Clint Eastwood is new target for the enemies of "Hollyweird" [View All]

Isn't Eastwood a republican?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=613804

Four days before the Oscars, one could usually expect the Hollywood studios to be at each other's throats, bad-mouthing each other's best picture contenders and taking out full-page advertisements in the trade papers to defend themselves against the calumnies of their rivals. This year, though, is a little different.

The attacks are in full swing, but they are coming largely from outside the industry - from right-wing commentators and broadcasters who relish every opportunity to bash the liberal lunatics of "Hollyweird" and feel particularly emboldened in the wake of President Bush's re-election.

Their principal target, oddly, is Clint Eastwood's multi-nominated boxing film Million Dollar Baby, which struck most critics as being seeped in old-fashioned American values - rugged individualism, achieving success against the odds, even going to church and wrestling with big moral dilemmas - but which has unleashed a torrent of rage from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the rabble-rousing radio host, and the author Michael Medved, self-appointed chronicler of the industry's moral degeneracy.

For the past couple of weeks, the naysayers have been working up a head of steam about something the critics barely mentioned in their reviews because it concerns the unflinchingly downbeat ending, which they felt dutybound not to reveal. (Independent readers might themselves want to consider pausing here until they have seen the film.) Million Dollar Baby, they argue, is an apology for euthanasia because the crusty old boxing trainer played by Eastwood chooses to carry out the mercy killing of his charge and surrogate daughter Maggie, played by Hilary Swank, after she is reduced to immobility by a dirty punch during a prize fight.