Salon: When Alexandra Pelosi made the Emmy-winning documentary "Journeys With George" in 2000, about her 18 months on the campaign trail with soon-to-be-President George W. Bush, her mother, Nancy, was not yet speaker of the House, and the name "Pelosi" was not yet an epithet on the lips of Republicans.
Eight years later, Pelosi went back out on the GOP campaign trail and into the lion's den, in the waning days of John McCain's failed bid for the White House. In her latest film, "Right America: Feeling Wronged," which debuts on HBO Monday night, Pelosi attends McCain and Sarah Palin rallies in 28 states and puts her microphone in the faces of some very passionate conservatives. As defeat looms, she watches the Republican base go through a very public grieving process, with most of the stages that psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described -- denial, depression and a whole lot of anger -- but not very much acceptance. Salon spoke to Pelosi by phone.
Early in the film Sean Hannity points to you in front of a McCain crowd and says, "That's Nancy Pelosi's daughter." And you respond, "You're going to get me lynched." Did you ever feel endangered or like there was any personal animus toward you during the making of this film?
Well, of course there was. But I'm trying to focus on the friends that I made in the red states instead of focusing on all the unchristian experiences that I had while traveling across America. It's easy to go out and make enemies. I think all the cable news programs go with the intention of stirring the pot. I was really genuinely trying to get to know some of the Republican base.
Thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people showed up to see the McCain-Palin ticket. Maybe a dozen people humiliated me -- you know, embarrassed me and made me feel really unwanted. I don't want to paint the whole lot of the Republican base as mean-spirited and cruel and unfriendly. To me it's more interesting to focus on the real Christian conservatives who didn't agree with anything I had to say but invited me over for dinner so that we could talk about it.
Did you go out there with the expectation that the polls were probably right and the candidate whose supporters you were interviewing was probably going to lose?
Well, more than 58 million people voted for John McCain, and I know that everyone on the coasts is on an Obama honeymoon right now, and they seem to forget that more than 58 million people did not want Barack Obama to be their president. And when I was traveling over the summer and I would go to rallies and 20,000 people would be there, it's hard to say I knew Obama was going to win. They had some real enthusiasm at these events for the GOP ticket. So, I did not go out presupposing that Barack Obama was going to be president. I wasn't trying to make a point about, "Ooh, he's going to be president and here are the losers, let's go check out what they have to say."
They had huge crowds, and I felt they were really underrepresented in the media. I didn’t feel like I saw these people on TV. And when I went out to talk to people, the first thing they would say to me was, "I can't believe you're talking to me." They were so flattered that I wanted to hear what they had to say because they'd say, "The media doesn't listen to us. You turn on the TV and all you see is Obama nation and you don't see us." They had some points. My liberal friends, I have to remind them that they have some really good points. No. 1, the media did not fairly represent them in this election. Obama was on the cover of every magazine all summer long. I understand Obama sold magazines. It's a business. But when you've got a presidential election and you have half of the country feeling really underrepresented, I think that's a real problem. And I think that's a bigger problem than Obama versus McCain.
There was this guy in Fort Wayne, Ind., Fred Boise, who says, "The media paints us to be fanatics. They treat us like hicks and we just go to Wal-Mart and we're rednecks. And they don't come to get to know us, and they go on stereotypes." I think all of that is true. Of course there were a lot of clichés that I had to overcome when I got there. "Hi, I'm from New York and my last name is Pelosi," and obviously that was like funny to them in a weird way. Like, "What are you doing here?"
...
At one point, you're talking to someone who describes Obama as the antichrist, and you say to him, "Do you want to maybe rethink that? Because I'm going to be accused, when this is on TV, of just looking for the craziest guy in the room." And he ponders it and says, "No." He's OK with saying it. How often did you have that kind of conversation with somebody?
Every day. It was much more common than you'd think. In the heat of an election, people say some crazy things. And in the case of the gentleman you're talking about, I have talked to him since then and this is just the way he sees it. I heard that every single day. It was much more common than you'd think. And I think that a lot of them were mimicking things they heard on right-wing radio.
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This is how I not so fondly remember McCain/Palin rallies:
Ah, and remember Fox "news" helping out:
And remember this charming video:
This one was especially unnerving. The thing is, these people have not gone away and representing them now are the House republicans:
