This article first appeared on NewsWithViews.com on November 4, 2007.


It’s Just an Act

“What does an actor want with a conscience anyway?”

                                                                             Jiminy Cricket,

                                                                                                       Walt Disney’s Pinocchio

   The young lady standing behind me in the long grocery line was probably wondering why I kept staring at her T-shirt.  No, it wasn’t extra tight or vulgar.  It had a picture of the Old Bard himself with the words, “Shakespeare hates your crappy poetry.”

   I liked her T-shirt.  Modern poetry, often expressed via pop music, just plain stinks.  I can imagine what William Shakespeare would think of today’s rap, rock, hip hop or country lyrics.

   I wonder too what the master of the English sonnet, poem and play would say about his old profession today.  Speaking through Prince Hamlet, he calls actors the “abstracts and brief chroniclers of the time.”  I think he’d see that art no longer imitates life; art now manipulates life.  Using their rhetorical skills and on-stage persona to promote countless left-wing causes, actors and entertainers manipulate the ignorant masses to trust their public image as both real and true.  They’re neither.

   Actors bear false stage names while pretending to be fictitious characters in fantasy situations that usually result in unrealistic solutions. 

   Actors and other entertainers are not real.  That’s what makes them entertaining.  But too many Americans lack something to believe, so they search for someone to believe.  In many cases, screen and song idols fill that void.

   While growing up, I often tried to mimic Clint Eastwood’s hoarse voice and tough guy image, whether it was “Blondie” or “Dirty Harry.”  I never forgot though that he was just an actor, and I was just a kid.  Besides, Clint is tall, dark and handsome, and I tend to be short, pale and ugly.  More importantly, Dirty Harry lives on the movie screen; I live in the real world.

   When I heard Clint Eastwood became mayor of Carmel, CA, I joked about it.  Doing my old Eastwood impression, I said I wondered if Clint went to work every day carrying a .44 magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world.”  I wondered how many folks voted for Clint Eastwood, the man, not his on-stage persona.

   I wondered the same thing when Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected as “Governator.”  I like his movies for the most part and didn’t even know about his long history with sodomites until I read Alan Stang’s recent article.  He’s just an actor.

   What in the world would make anyone believe an actor has the knowledge and wisdom to lead a state the size of California?!

   Because they play a part, pretending to be someone they’re not, actors tend to think they are the persona they portray, and that somehow entitles them to express their authoritative opinion on political and moral issues in which they’re actually clueless.  Even worse, they run for and often win public office, not based on their qualifications for the office but because functionally illiterate Americans trust their phony images.

   Do you think it bothers Arnold that he sits in an office he’s unqualified to hold?  Of course, not.  He’s an actor.  His conscience isn’t bothered that he’s turned hordes of pedophiles loose among public school children.  And yes, I find it very easy to call homosexuals pedophiles.  Why do you think they want un-restricted access to our children?  The very nature of their unnatural lifestyle prevents them from having children of their own.  They demand access to our kids in order to recruit and seduce them.  Arnold and the bulk of the entertainment community care less what parents think of their agenda.

   They just want our kids!

   Arnold is not the only actor to hold high public office.  There was Gov. Jesse Ventura and Governor then President Ronald Reagan.  Ventura wrestled his way into the governor’s office in 1998, but after four years of placating his sodomite and abortionist friends and slamming “weak” Christians everywhere, the good people of Minnesota finally discovered Ventura was as bad at governing as he is at acting.

   Reagan, now that’s a different story.  The only Republican more passionately quoted and revered than Reagan is our wanna-be Caesar, Abraham Lincoln.  Criticizing either of these demagogues is tantamount to blasphemy to those whose allegiance lies with the Grand Old Party, rather than the U.S. Constitution or the Bible.  But as Alan Stang reveals in the above article, Reagan helped defeat a bill that would have kept predatory teachers out of California classrooms.  His efforts culminated in the formation of the Log Cabin Republicans, who take their name from that other Republican deity, whose parental lineage and sexual orientation have been questioned throughout history and whose life was ironically ended by an envious actor.

   Now there’s another Republican-actor running for president.  I watched him and the others in last Sunday night’s debate.  When Thompson was asked if he was lazy, he read from a prepared script that described his many political accomplishments going back to age 17.  If I live to be 160 years old, I hope to have as many or more accomplishments than that!  That still doesn’t make him conservative.

   Some of us have not forgotten that Thompson is one of those few Republicans who couldn’t find anything in the Constitution to convict Bill Clinton of “high crimes and misdemeanors” [a.k.a., perjury, adultery and suborning witnesses are minor offenses].  I suggest he couldn’t do so because he and Bubba share membership in the same subversive organization, the Council on Foreign Relations, the fine folks who conspired to create the League of Nations in 1920 then the United Nations in 1945.

   The UN has worked tirelessly for 60 years to subvert and destroy U.S. sovereignty with international treaties only palatable to communist, third world countries and those who hate us.  Maybe one day I’ll hear of him, Bubba and other CFR members like Sandy Berger, Jimmy Carter, Rick Warren and John Kerry all going bird hunting with that other famous CFR member and impeccable sportsman, Dick Chaney.

   Hunter gave clear, strong answers to all questions, but he was rarely asked anything of substance like FOX’ favorite neo-cons, Giuliani, Romney, Thompson and McCain.  I think Ron Paul was set up for controversial questions then interrupted before he could finish.  The neo-cons seemed to have some idea what questions they were going to be asked, making the one candidate with the most integrity appear to be little more than a whinny dissenter.

   Yeah, the Republican Party has left Ron Paul because the Republican Party has left the Constitution and Christian moral values.  But who’s going to quibble over such trivial matters as the Constitution and the Bible?  Surely not voters, and especially not evangelical Christian voters who’ve been conditioned to choose between the lesser of two evils, even though doing so still has them choosing evil.

   Although my experience in the public school classroom taught me never to be surprised by the gullibility of American proles, I’m still bothered by how easily the masses are manipulated.  I guess that old Log Cabin icon said it best, that you can fool some people all of the time.  Shakespeare knew it back in his day and did a wonderful job showing us how easily the masses can be manipulated and controlled.

   Recall the two major speeches in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.  Cassius had warned Brutus not to allow Antony to speak to the crowds at Caesar’s funeral, but Brutus figured Antony to be a dumb soldier, one given to “much sport.”  Brutus believed he was the better speaker, the better actor, and could persuade the masses to accept his interpretation of events.  In short order, he calmed the crowds and explained how he “loved Caesar” but that he “loved Rome more.”  He said Caesar was a tyrant and had to die for the good of Rome.  He gave no evidence that Caesar was a tyrant but that he, Brutus, was an honorable man, and they, the ignorant masses, should believe him for his honor and for his honor, believe him.  Soon the people were praising Brutus and cursing the name of Caesar.

   When I hear Democrats touting the “need” for socialized medicine, higher taxes on the rich [a.k.a., the middle class], confiscation of privately owned guns, setting aside religious liberty and freedom of speech in order to protect the so-called rights of sodomites and “undocumented immigrants,” I think of Brutus.  I think of Brutus when anyone says they hate abortion but support a woman’s so-called right to an abortion!

   After Brutus thinks he has the masses pretty much under control, Antony steps onto the stage carrying the body of Julius Caesar.  At first the people don’t want to hear him until he begins his “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” appeal to their emotions and starts to get their attention.  Does he actually refute anything Brutus says?  Does he prove Caesar was not a tyrant?  Not really.  He simply causes the people to question the only evidence Brutus gave them, that of his being an honorable man.  With much cynicism, he repeats, “And Brutus is an honorable man,” as he gets the people to recount how Caesar had turned down a ceremonial crown three times, how he brought the city much wealth from his military victories and how he wept when the people wept.  Finally, one of the publicans [hmmm, [re]publican?] comments to his friend, “If thou consider rightly of the matter, Caesar has had great wrong.”

   Nah!  Why anyone think that?  They only stabbed the man 23 times!

   When I think of Antony’s speech, I think of Republicans who brow-beat us with emotional appeals and calls for patriotism, even if it means setting aside our Constitutional rights [wiretapping our phone conversations or locking us up in federal prisons without charging us with a crime] in order to stop terrorism.  I think of that boogey man terrorist we can’t seem to find and destroy, maybe because finding and killing him would leave them without someone with name recognition enough to make the American people so afraid for their security, they’re willing to give up their freedom.  I think of high sounding speeches about letting the tax payers keep more of our own money, about defending the lives of unborn children and traditional family values or building a border fence to protect us from additional “undocumented immigrants,” but I don’t see anyone eliminating the IRS, overturning Roe v. Wade, sending perverts back to their closets or 12-20 million illegal aliens home!

   There are no Constitutional conservatives or Bible-believing Christians represented by the Democrats in this upcoming election.  They’re only a couple represented in the Republicans.  The frontrunners are not among those few.  They only look like conservatives [except pretty boy Romney, who must go to the same barber as John Edwards].  They only sound like conservatives.  It’s just an act.

   Do you really want to give this country over to another actor?  When the two political parties choose an actor-politician for their nominee, will you seriously consider a third political party?  I know I will.