It is amazing that some people have the presence of mind to record things. Like clips from last night’s virtual “Princess Bride” reunion benefit for Wisconsin Democrats. I was too busy having a wonderful time in the middle of one of the worst years ever.
Inconceivable, I know.
After a delayed start for technical glitches Sunday night, the original cast members (those who were “not dead,” said director Rob Reiner) gave an online table read from the original William Goldman script. Over 100,000 donors watched. There were some muted mic mistakes and audio-video delays, but overall? Wonderful.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“Tonight’s once-in-a-lifetime Princess Bride reunion changes the odds on who wins Wisconsin,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “This is by a mile the biggest grassroots fundraiser that we have ever had.”
Wikler added that “chipping in to register for tonight, and post signing up to volunteer tonight, can make the difference between the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, and another four years of the Trump nightmare.”
Wikler is a former Senior Adviser at MoveOn.
There was one particularly prescient line from Goldman I had forgotten:
Fezzik: Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid, or something like that?
Man in Black: Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
Mandy Patinkin brought the sword. Billy Crystal wore the Miracle Max hat and dressed his house to look like Max’s and Valerie’s. Thirty-plus years later, Robin Wright seems to have aged on a different timeline, one fan tweeted, wondering if her skin-care regime includes unicorn tears.
And of course. “Listening to Mandy Patinkin deliver THE line (you know the one) is the happiest I’ve felt in all of 2020,” tweeted Kendall Brown, a disability and healthcare advocate.
Patton Oswalt hosted a question and answer session after the reading was over too soon.
Oswalt (to Crystal): “How did Miracle Max get fired from the castle by Humperdinck?”
Crystal: “He wrote a book…he told about how Humperdinck lied about the plague”
Take some time to watch Patinkin reminisce for his sons how much fun he’d had sword fighting with Cary Elwes. In “Sword Memories 3,” he tears up. “And I just miss it … to this day.”
It is very easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize the Democratic Party for failing to live up to its potential. “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential,” Peanuts‘ Linus once said. Wisconsin Democrats are showing us what potential looks like.
Now, let me reminisce a moment.
Netroots Nation is the country’s largest annual progressive activist convention. (I met Digby at a different one in D.C. in 2009.) Yes, there are informative panels and trainings, but the real reason to go is to network with activists from around the country in the hallways and at parties in the evening.
At a noisy party in a Philadelphia hotel suite last year, I spoke with a woman whose name I recognized but could not place. Later I found out she had been involved in CORE, SNCC, and SDS back in the 1960s. All these decades later, she is still organizing for progressive causes.
In the main room everyone drank beer packed in shoulder to shoulder. But in a corner of the bedroom where we retreated to hear each other, one man sat in a chair in a corner, head down, his nose in his laptop, typing away. Working.
It was Ben Wikler.
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