Richard Dreyfuss: Impeaching Bush Is 'Cause Worth Fighting for,'... (Looney Left Alert)

Impeaching Bush Is 'Cause Worth Fighting for,' Actor Says By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor February 17, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - Richard Dreyfuss, the actor who starred in movies ranging from "Jaws" to "Mr. Holland's Opus," told an audience in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that "there are causes worth fighting for," and one of those is the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

"There are causes worth fighting for even if you know that you will lose," Dreyfuss said during a speech at the National Press Club. "Unless you are willing to accept torture as part of a normal American political lexicon, unless you are willing to accept that leaving the Geneva Convention is fine and dandy, if you accept the expansion of wiretapping as business as usual, the only way to express this now is to embrace the difficult and perhaps embarrassing process of impeachment."

Noting that the process was established by the country's "founders, who we revere to check executive abuse with congressional balance," Dreyfuss said impeachment "is a statement that we refuse to endorse bad behavior."

"If we refuse to debate the appropriateness of the process of impeachment, we endorse that behavior, and we approve the enlargement of executive power," regardless of whoever may occupy the White House in the future, he said.

"Now, it is not your job as the press to impeach George Bush," the actor stated. However, people in the media should "maintain the integrity of that debate" by not dismissing the topic out of hand as partisan or unpatriotic.

During his address on the subject of Hollywood's view of contemporary news media, Dreyfuss said he is not a cynic or a liberal, but is instead a "'libo-conservo-middle-of-the-roado,' and I have been for many years."

"I'm deeply in love with my country," he added. "As a matter of fact, I'm deeply in love with the country that I was taught about in school, the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Nevertheless, Dreyfuss charged that "people can sometimes be pretty thoughtless, pretty terrified and do some pretty impressive damage" when they are wrong or "are the victims of political hypnosis."

In the past, "time and distance played an amazing part in keeping the human race from killing itself," the actor noted. The need for revenge after an attack "inevitably weakened because it took a lot of time to get men into ships and move them to the right battlefield. Only those truly staunch of heart and truly zealous could keep up that hatred.

"But now, people in Kansas see the [Twin] Towers fall at the exact instant as people in Nigeria or Cairo," he said. "Instantaneous knowledge leads to instantaneous reaction, which creates a demand for an instantaneous, reflexive response."

Dreyfuss blamed part of that reaction on television newscasters, who "fill the air with the same terrible clips, the same blaring intro music, the same screaming fonts, and then the same clips again and the same screaming fonts again and again to fill up these news cycles."

"Television did this. Television created the sound bite and then shrunk it," the actor said. "Television replaced words with images so that people make extraordinary decisions based not on prose or any attempt at analysis," but on pictures instead.

The actor saved his harshest tone for those who accuse critics of the government and its officials of having a more serious motive.

"Watch me lose my sense of humor if people accuse me of treason," Dreyfuss said before mocking two of the Fox News Channel's most popular hosts. "'That's not very O'Reilly of you, Mister Smarty-Pants,' or 'What would Sean Hannity have to say about that, Mister Too-Complex-for-Your-Own-Good?'"

However, "none of this happened because of any conspiracy," he stated. "This happened because we have not paid attention to the new rules of the electronic media."

To restore true American values, the actor called for children to be taught "the tools of debate and dissent," as well as a return to the principle of civility, which he called "the oxygen that democracies require else they become poisoned and die, as this democracy will."

PCTech said: Did you happen to notice that the last four letters in his last name is "fuss." Need I say more?

I haven't visited this site in a while, and I was reminded of a past experience by a C-SPAN caller a few days ago, who held gushy regard for the openness of the debate here, while he lobbed harsh criticism of The Democratic Underground, which he decried as exclusive, for liberals only. I couldn't believe what he said. Perhaps Free Republic had changed, I thought. I mean, surely a conservative wouldn't make a claim that egregiously false.

To see what the case was, I decided it was time to drop by. This article about Richard Dreyfuss seemed like the perfect thread to check, since the story contains one of the more blood-boiling conservative targets: an actor. More precisely, an actor critical of the administration. Well, a perusal of the posts suggests that nothing has changed since my last visit, and this remark above by PCTech is typical of the level of the discussion, and is pervasive throughout the length of the thread: snide, single-line dismissives that could have been left unsaid, except that the authors had a compulsion to see their own names as part of the team, even if that tiny name is attached to the most embarrassingly and gleefully inane comments. PCTech himself submitted multiple comments, none of them better or more thought out than the one I quoted above. I'm incredulous that people can sustain interest in a forum that provides nothing above this level of discourse. It's like a dysfunctional glee club.

Dreyfuss's comments deserve more than childish derision, whether you disagree with him or not. His concerns are shared by literally millions of other Americans -- and people of the world, really -- that our values have been compromised, and we know longer carry the inspiring torch of human rights, that somehow, to our disgrace, the world has to look elsewhere. If you had nothing to counter to his remarks, you would have looked wiser to say nothing, and merely digest the article and move on. Why these silly responses? I know right wingers are taught by their noisy radio pundits to summarily disrespect all entertainment personalities (unless they're conservative -- like Ted Nugent -- in which case, their professions become irrelevant and their words quoted as gospel), and the assault must be shrill and seething. But Dreyfuss's concerns are legitimate and sincere. Your childish derision seems silly in comparison to his mature presentation, a fact you'll never come to appreciate as long as you continue with this approach. You don't look good, let me tell you. Show a little class and formulate a thought or two. Spend time thinking about it, about what you object to. Then write your response. Don't join this gleefully stupid chorus just so you can fell like you belong.

Now. Let's see how long this post lasts.

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