Report: Sauce for goose may not be sauce for gander

LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has a column in which she takes a contrarian view of the Arnold candidacy, calling it good for Democrats:

This post-millennium rarity of Republican Party leaders and pundits around the country rushing to embrace a show-biz celebrity campaigning in a political race -- even if this is only a semi-sane one -- has huge ramifications for the coming 2004 presidential and congressional elections. Because it re-enfranchises actor activists, who, if they've supported Democratic candidates or causes during the George W. administration, have been Bush-bullied to shut up, or sit out, or at least realize their stumping can be a PR nightmare.
...
Hard to believe it was only last year that Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tim Hagan, married to Star Trek: Voyager actress Kate Mulgrew, was harmed by a Republican fund-raising letter charging his campaign benefited “from friends in the Kennedy family and his connections to Hollywood.” In the case of Schwarzenegger, he’s married to a Kennedy and he’s the personification of Hollywood.

Even Fox News Channel and its clone MSNBC can’t miss the obvious hypocrisy of, on the one hand, discouraging Americans from listening to the political views of the steroid-salaried entertainment elite and, on the other, urging Californians to hang on every
public-policy word Schwarzenegger has yet to utter.

Which is why film and television producer Robert Greenwald, co-founder of the Hollywood anti–Iraq invasion group Artists United To Win Without War, is pointing out the inconsistency. “I look forward to all the folks on the Fox Network who busily attacked actors for having an opinion about the war coming forward and attacking the Terminator for running for office with no ideas, no plans and no platform.”

Which is all terribly logical and completely misses the point. "Liberal Hollywood" is a concept that's out there. "Liberal Hollywood" are the people who have no business having political opinions. People in Hollywood who are conservative aren't part of Liberal Hollywood, and they won't count.

(Stipulating that AS is conservative, which is hard to read from his explicit views but getting clearer as his team shapes up. No idea what's up with Rob Lowe.)

Credit: pointed to by Mark Evanier, who is spending way too much time writing imaginary stories for a non-existent 1960s Gold Key comic of the Dick Van Dyke Show. I'd call it fanfic but there's no Buddy/Mel action. Yet.
- posted by Don Porges @ 8/15/2003 10:45:00 PM |