About a hundred celebrities, plus Mike Farrell, have formed a group called “Artists United to Win Without War,” and signed a letter to President Bush urging him to knock off the schoolyard bully rhetoric against Iraq. Unbeknownst to them, their petition has condemned us to war.
A quick glance at the names on the petition shows some we haven’t seen in quite a long time. There’s Kent McCord, star of the ’70s cop drama “Adam-12,” who has subsequently appeared in … reruns of “Adam-12.” Ken Howard, who played a basketball coach on the late ’70s drama “The White Shadow.” Melissa Gilbert, Loretta Swit, and Ed O’Neill help round out the cast of signatories who are now the Loch Ness Monsters of Hollywood. If the rest of these “artists” were truly compassionate, they’d first unite to find these guys some work before trying to tackle U.S. foreign policy.
Also signing the letter was the usual cast of people with too much time between films, such as Kim Basinger, Matt Damon, Anjelica Huston, Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Danny Glover, Samuel L. Jackson and Jessica Lange. My favorites among these? Basinger, who at least had the wherewithal to ditch the “Pompadour of Pomposity,” Alec Baldwin. Asner, who is the Yoda of half-baked leftist Jedis. And Glover, who faces the ultimate dilemma in one of his latest films entitled “3 A.M.” in which he plays a New York City cab driver who refuses to pick himself up.
All of them, of course, are qualified to have the president’s ear on this issue since they could, at the drop of a hat, play a role in which they had to pretend they were someone who knew what they were talking about. In addition to the celebrities, to add some real-world credibility, the letter was also signed by Ret. Adm. Eugene Carroll Jr. and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck. For now, we’ll forgive Carroll Jr. and Peck, since they probably got caught up in all this just for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get a close-up look at Basinger.
Are celebrity petitions effective?
For the last couple of decades, many celebrities have petitioned presidents and others to release from prison, or at least get a new trial for, Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in 1975 of killing two FBI agents. Peltier is still using soap-on-a-rope and padlocked briefs to this day.
In 1998, celebrities from around the world signed a petition calling Kenneth Starr’s investigation into Bill Clinton’s perjury an “inquisitorial harassment by a fanatical prosecutor.” Clinton was impeached soon after.
Early this summer, many of these same actors signed a petition asking U.S. senators to vote against a plan to bury the nation’s nuclear power waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The petition so impressed Congress that they immediately started dumping nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain (now known as “Enrico Fermi’s Port-A-Potty”).
Why do they fail? It’s really more a perception of them as people than as support, or lack thereof, for their ideas. Their fame provides the mount, various media supply the multitudes, so they give a sermon – completely unaware that the vast majority of Americans see them as freaky, whorish, duplicitous, unrestrained, neurologically jumbled heaps of discredited, ivory-tower ideologues.
Many politicians may possess those same characteristics, but they’re experienced enough to know that the ordinary voter is put off by those opinions, so they hide them from public view. Politicians listen to Hollywood so as to get some of their money, but in most cases, do the opposite of what they ask. Political survival is more important to most of them than being the guest of honor at David Geffen’s party.
Hollywood should realize that, if they’re truly interested in avoiding U.S. involvement in a war in the Middle East, they should form a group called “Actors For A Radioactive Baghdad.” Public support for an Iraq invasion would plummet. Nobody in their right mind would want to start a war if Mia Farrow and REM thought it was a good idea, right? The president, and Congress, wanting to get re-elected, would then be forced into a political life of pacifism. Hollywood’s anti-war objectives will have been achieved with one final phone call from President Bush:
“General Franks, Dubya here. Got this letter from about a hundred celebrities urging me to invade Iraq. I just wanted to let you know, because as soon as I get ‘thumbs up to attack’ votes from Conrad Bain, Reese Witherspoon and that guy who played ‘Screech’ on ‘Saved By The Bell’, we’re standing down. Time for a re-think.”
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