Source:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/
Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log
Voices From the Fringe
Embattled stars, Hollywood's and the NRA's.
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
It isn't easy to follow the stories, not to mention the travel plans, of
all the Hollywood luminaries who announced plans to leave the country in
the event their candidate lost the presidency. As he did in 2000, despite
countless warnings by Barbra Streisand, Cher, Julia Roberts and similar
analysts that a George W. Bush presidency would bring a wave of
repression as yet unmatched in our history. As Ms. Streisand explained
it, "Our whole way of life is at stake."
Notwithstanding the new dark age to fall on us if Al Gore went down to
defeat, Ms. Streisand and company issued no declarations about leaving
the country--a wise move. At least one member of the House of Baldwin may
have wished he'd done the same by the time he'd finished efforts to undo
the messes issuing from just such a bulletin about his own plans in the
event Mr. Bush became president.
That would be Alec Baldwin, actor and political activist, and husband (at
the time) of Kim Basinger, who delivered the news in an interview with
the German magazine Focus. On this occasion, shortly before the election,
Ms. Basinger held forth on her husband's character and principles.
"Alec is the biggest moralist that I know. He stands completely
behind what he says." She could, further, well imagine Alec making
good on his threat. "And then I'd probably have to go too."
Deluged by adverse publicity once the story reached the U.S., Mr. Baldwin
explained that his wife had never talked to that magazine, that she had
never heard of it, and that he had never made any such comments about
leaving America. Focus magazine then produced a transcript, which forced
Mr. Baldwin to provide a variety of other explanations. "The studio
forces you to do dozens of interviews with people you never heard
of," he told the New York Daily News, and, moreover, he and his wife
had certainly "never said unequivocally" that they would leave
the country if Mr. Bush won.
Also among the celebrities announcing plans to emigrate if George Bush
won was director Robert Altman--today enjoying a resurgent career thanks
to the praise (and multiple Oscar nominations) heaped on his new film,
"Gosford Park." In 2000 he talked to reporters at a French film
festival (for reasons too obvious to explicate, meditations about the
need to leave America tend to be delivered only on foreign shores, or
reserved for the ears of the foreign press). There, at Deauville, Mr.
Altman announced that he would move to France if George Bush won.
Mr. Bush did win, of course, and Mr. Altman didn't move, which doesn't
mean the director has given up public brooding on the subject. Indeed, we
learn from a Times of London interview, conducted only last month, that
Mr. Altman wanted to stay in England, for reasons he outlined in clear,
if familiar, detail.
"This present government in America I just find disgusting," he
informed the reporter. Further, its president was a man who couldn't run
a baseball team successfully. He would be happy to stay in England
because there is nothing in America he would miss at all. "When I
see an American flag flying, it's a joke."
There is, of course, a limit to the number of times one can take to the
public stage to renounce one's country and heap scorn on its
leaders--after which audiences are bound to begin heading for the exits.
Indeed, Mr. Altman might do well to ration further public pronouncements
on his wish to abandon the U.S. for France, Britain, and similar
political Edens. Otherwise--fearful vision--we may find him wandering the
shores of Europe in perpetuity, catching at the sleeves of travelers to
announce that he has decided to leave America.
The five months that have passed since Sept. 11 have thrown a spotlight
on every aspect of life, every quarter of opinion. One way or another,
all are involved. Wartime has a way of doing that. But for the assault of
Sept. 11, we would not now be staring, in equal parts revulsion and
fascination, at John Walker Lindh, Taliban fighter from California, and
thinking about the parents who had happily signed the checks for their
special boy, reveling in what they saw as his openness, and sent him
merrily off to Yemen or anywhere else he wished. For which they
received, in return, envenomed letters and e-mails, like the one to his
mother that read, "I really don't know what your big attachement
\[sic\] to America is all about. What has America ever done for
anybody?"
In that spotlight we have seen and heard from the entire spectrum of our
political activists--establishment types, along with any number of
homegrown fringe groups--and it is some show. Frothing-at-the-mouth
zealots of the right are as one with those of the left in their concern
that security measures could erode civil liberties.
The latest to raise the alarm was Wayne LaPierre, executive vice
president of the National Rifle Association, and a man normally
preoccupied with the endless travails of gun owners. Two weeks ago, Mr.
LaPierre took to the microphones to declare that the nation had
"witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain-basement
prices" and that Americans must not allow themselves to be swayed
into endorsing this fire sale by "a popular conservative
president."
The executive vice president of the NRA was, it seems, particularly
exercised by airport security measures like body searches, and similar
high crimes against freedom. In Mr. LaPierre's world, now as ever, no
menace is secondary to that of government controls, or more incendiary
than infringements on individual rights. There is a movie in here
somewhere, for an ambitious director.
As for Mr. Altman, he may, someday in some brighter future, shed the
miseries of life in America and move to England. There, over long meals
at the Reform Club, he could sit with London's best and brightest and
share horror stories about the States--a refugee happily ashore at last.
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Edward ><+>
If you have fifty problems and one of them is government, you have only
one problem.
http://www.global-connector.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reality_pump/
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