The Only Clint Eastwood Video You Have to Watch Before His #GOP2012 Speech

A film declared "fascist" by angry liberal critics. (Eastwood said he didn't mind, so long as they paid to see it.) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_Callahan.JPG">Wikimedia</a>

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Tonight’s “mystery speaker” at the GOP convention in Tampa is not hologram Gipper, but the non-hologram Dirty Harry, sources confirmed to numerous media outlets.

After a few days of rabid Twitter-based speculation, the Romney campaign revealed that legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood is slated to speak at the Republican National Convention some time after a musical performace by American Idol Taylor Hicks, but before a speech by Marco Rubio. Eastwood threw his weight behind Romney earlier this month, when endorsing the former Massachusetts governor at an Idaho fundraiser.

Instead of analyzing Eastwood’s ideological leanings (which he has described as a blend of Milton Friedman and Noam Chomsky), take a gander at the only footage you really need to see before his convention address. Here he is, with the president of the United States

Full disclosure: I’m an unabashed fan of the 82-year-old filmmaker, whatever his politics. But as the self-professed libertarian and “Eisenhower Republican” is going all-in for Romney/Ryan 2012, it is worth reading this:

Eastwood: These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?!…They go on and on with all this bullshit about “sanctity”—don’t give me that sanctity crap! Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.

…right next to this:

Romney: On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage…When I am president, I will preserve the Defense of Marriage Act and I will fight for a federal amendment defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman!

I am not suggesting a supporter must agree with everything his or her candidate believes or says; just throwing it out there.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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