Politics, the new showbiz

IT'S NO secret that everyone is weighing in on politics these days, from David Letterman to Barbara Walters and the esteemed ladies of "The View" -- who, as the New York Times pointed out, have had Barack Obama, John McCain and even Bill Clinton on their couch, with McCain clearly getting the toughest grilling. But should film critics be weighing in on the presidential race as well? America's leading film critic, the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, certainly thinks so, and has been on quite a roll lately, writing a series of barbed commentaries about GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Ebert leaped into the fray with an essay about Palin where he dubbed her the "American Idol" candidate. Ebert said, in part: "There's a reason 'American Idol' gets such high ratings. People identify with the candidates. They think, 'Hey, that could be me up there on the show!' " He added that he didn't want a candidate who simply appointed people to study global warming long after the scientific consensus was in.

Ebert is hardly the only critic who's begun to focus on politics. When I was up at the recent Toronto Film Festival, I found myself seeing the event in an entirely different light after reading a variety of online commentaries from New York Post critic Kyle Smith, who had tons of fun mocking a number of lefty-minded films.

But back to my original question: Liberal or conservative, should film critics be at work on a second front, offering their take on America's politicians? Judging from past e-mails I've received, I'd say a majority of our readers would say no. You'd probably get the same answer -- no -- if you asked a traditional journalism professor or newspaper editor. I guess that (once again) makes me a contrarian. To me, film critics, like TV and theater critics, are especially well equipped to analyze today's politics, which is why Frank Rich made such a seamless transition from theater to media and political commentator. In fact, in some ways film critics are probably better equipped to assess the political theater of today's presidential campaigns, since our campaigns are -- as has surely been obvious for some time -- far more about theater and image creation than politics.