Wait, is that Ralph Nader again?
CAUSE CÉLÈBRE
The former presidential candidate weighs in on (yawn) is pick in the race.
JUST when you thought the worst of the holidays -- and the caucus madness -- was over, who should arrive but the ghost of elections past.
Ralph Nader, looking more spectral all the time, decided to break months of (relative) silence to voice his opinions on the Democratic field of presidential candidates.
In case you care: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a corporate goon and former Sen. John Edwards is the man on the white horse, according to Nader (who still is threatening to join the race.)
The news from Nader was about as welcome as a trail of fire ants at an Iowa corn roast.
"Can't we get one of Dennis Kucinich's UFOs to beam him up?" Democratic strategist Rick Taylor asked.
As far as Hollywood is concerned, Nader has left the building. He's a has-been for one simple reason, perhaps the harshest of all: The recently released documentary on his life was a box-office bomb.
The movie "An Unreasonable Man" made its Sundance debut at the same time as the documentary about Al Gore's global warming crusade, "An Inconvenient Truth." That documentary won an Oscar and resulted in Gore winning a Nobel Peace Prize and a slap on the back from Hollywood's docu-god Michael Moore.
Nader? Well, let's just say by the end of the last year, his people would come to your house and screen the DVD for free -- if you would let them in. They'd even bring the popcorn (free of trans fats, of course).
How bad was it?
First there was the problem of obtaining a major distributor for the film. Without a large studio onboard, "An Unreasonable Man" staggered out of Sundance into the "art" theaters with the lumpy velvet seats. (There also was an issue of getting Nader to attend the L.A. premiere -- must have been scheduling conflicts, or maybe he was just being unreasonable.)
After four months in U.S. theaters last May, Nader's film had grossed only $175,237, according to the Internet Movie Database. ("An Inconvenient Truth," by contrast, went on to bring in $41.6 million worldwide.)
All this suggests that there is hardly a large constituency waiting for Nader to put his imprimatur on a candidate. So when Nader weighed in this week on the Iowa caucuses, there was a predictably fierce reaction on the blogs.
Wonkette's wry Jim Newell had this to say: "Nader supports Edwards. This should help his chances, considering how much Democrats like Ralph Nader after he stole votes from George W. Bush in 2000 to give Al Gore the presidency. No?"
