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| Jules Crittenden: Nicole Kidman is |
| 2006-08-17 |
| IÂ’ve been wondering if it is possible for me to describe exactly how much I donÂ’t give a damn what actors think.Or rock stars. I should state at the outset that when actors lend their celebrity to raise money for cancer research and similar causes, I think its wonderful. On foreign policy, I just donÂ’t give a damn. . . . The problem with the gratuitous yammering is, actors and rock stars generally arenÂ’t very bright. They are superficial. Their professional focus is on conveying emotion, whatever emotion the pay check and the director demands at any given moment. They spend most of their time on stage, on movie sets, in Hollywood or in various vacation locales where the emphasis is not on reality. They are surrounded by staff whose jobs depend on keeping all mortal nuisances at bay. Presumeably, weÂ’re supposed to care what they think, because we feel like we know these people, and they are everything we wish we could be. They say clever things on screen, look good and have money. And war is bad. The tragic plight of innocents is important. These are easily grasped truths. Bitter experience shows us it is sometimes necessary to look beyond these immediate undeniable facts. This is a cruel truth. Foreign policy and war are extremely complex matters. . . . This level of complexity is generally beyond the scope of the glitterati. Yesterday, a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times by an A-list of actors denounced the killing of innocents in Lebanon and Israel. They laid the blame exactly where it belongs. La-la luminaries Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton of "Everyone Loves Raymond," William Hurt and 73 others said they are "pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas." The amount of logic and empathy on display, the willingness to break from prevailing views that IsraelÂ’s act of self-defense was "disproportionate" and that Hezbollah should be allowed to fire from within civilian populations, is astonishing. I still, by and large, donÂ’t give a damn what actors think. But in this case, the pigs have taken flight. I have a prediction. More of them will emerge. Actors who think itÂ’s cool to oppose murderous terrorist groups and have the totally cool sophistication to appreciate some level of complexity in world affairs. Actors who have the ability to look past the immediate emotional impulse, buck the cocktail party clucking, and transcend superficiality. This is something different, and IÂ’m interested. Besides, Nicole Kidman is hot. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 James Woods? Of course he is a great man. The high school in Quahog, R.I. is named after him. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2006-08-17 17:44 |
| #4 I really like James Wood, a very powerful actor who bring a real intensity in every role (damn, I wish I could look/act like him), conservative, and, IIRC, he's got an IQ of... 180!!! And, there's this incredible tidbit of History... |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-08-17 16:06 |
| #3 "Woods had been accepted to attend the United States Air Force Academy with the intention of becoming a fighter pilot. Unfortunately, several weeks before he was to depart, Woods suffered an accident involving falling through a plate glass window -- which injured his hand tendons severely enough to result in his acceptance to the Academy being retracted. At 17, James sat his SAT tests and scored a perfect 800 on the verbal part and 779 on the math portion - something not exactly all of his acting-peers can put on their CV." |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2006-08-17 15:57 |
| #2 Crittenden was embedded with A Co., 4-64 Armor, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID during the battle for Baghdad. I remember his reporting on the way up. He knows what this thing is all about. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-08-17 14:04 |
| #1 They fly commercial, they could be on a flight. If they start using too many private planes, their enviro cred goes down the tube. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2006-08-17 13:47 |