Hollywood antiwar sentiment is loud and clear. And so is the opposition.
Inquirer Staff Writer
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It's the largest outpouring of star-powered anti-war sentiment since the Vietnam War.
Barbra Streisand, Martin Sheen, Jessica Lange, Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Martin Scorsese, Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Ossie Davis, Robert Altman.
Some of the country's biggest stars are loudly against invading Iraq.
Edward Norton, Tyne Daly, Danny Glover, Rob Reiner, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Mike Farrell, Janeane Garofalo, Woody Harrelson and Rosario Dawson.
The list goes on.
They're marching and speechifying, signing petitions and making commercials to rally opposition against Gulf War Two: Return to Iraq.
Not everyone is impressed.
"If Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people, Hollywood is a Washington for the simpleminded," cracked maverick U.S. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.).
Nevertheless, people are listening. "Celebrities have credibility with the general public," said Dennis Broe, a professor of film, media and television history at Long Island University. "As they raise the profile of the opposition, it hurts the president."
"They definitely influence opinion," agreed Paul Levinson, chairman of communications and media studies at Fordham University. "There's even a term for it in propaganda: false association, or appeal to false authority."
What this means, he said, is that a person admired as an authority on moviemaking or acting is easily accepted as an authority on politics as well.
The current rage for Five-Minute Ordinary People Celebrities hasn't dimmed the power of Hollywood stars by so much as a watt, Levinson said.
"Joe Millionaire is still an average Joe. He lacks the clout of a star whose work we've admired over and over on the screen."
But can they stop the war? So far, the Hollywood Left has managed to seriously annoy some in the American Middle.
By yesterday afternoon, 30,531 people had logged on to www.ipetitions.com to sign an online petition called "Citizens Against Celebrity 'Pundits.' "
The petition protests movie- star marchers "using their celebrity to interfere with the defense of our country."
Accompanying many signatures are blistering comments - "low-intelligence egomaniacs," "stay in your fantasy world and out of foreign affairs" - as well as boycott threats.
It may seem that the antiwar stars speak for all of Hollywood. They don't. Many actors are Republican (Heather Locklear, Kelsey Grammer, Babylon Five's Tracy Scoggins, Senator-turned-Law-&-Order-star Fred Thompson.)
Others are libertarian (Drew Carey, Lisa Kennedy, Kurt Russell, Penn and Teller, Tommy Chong, Russell Means).
Emma Caulfield, who plays Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, describes herself as "ultraconservative." Conservative Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton is honorary chairperson of Feminists for Life.
Professionally they may all get along. But when it comes down to the political and the personal, Hollywood Hawks and Tinseltown Liberals can clash.
There was Bush supporter James Woods, tooling down the highway in his car on Feb. 3, when he heard David Clennon, star of CBS's The Agency, on the radio comparing the "moral climate" of America to Nazi Germany.
Except, Clennon told Sean Hannity, host of the national syndicated show, Hitler was smarter than Bush.
Furious, Woods called the show and peppered Clennon with quotes from Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who famously called war "the continuation of politics by other means."
In January, Woods came under fire for telling the host of a Los Angeles TV show: "If they harbor terrorists, we should wipe them off the face of the Earth. Eventually, one of these terrorist diaper-heads is going to come around and do something more horrible."
Callers complained that the insult was a racist slur. "I think Mr. Woods is off his medication," said Jean Abinader of the Arab American Institute in Washington.
Last month, hawk Ron Silver almost caused an international incident at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Enraged that Patrick Cox, president of the European Union parliament, called the United States an imperialist nation, Silver jumped from his table and lectured Europe for sitting on the sidelines in the Balkans while America fought for peace.
Afterward, he and Cox went out for a drink. Lately, Silver's been popping up on TV talk shows, urging viewers to give war a chance.
Pro-war or anti-, celebrities seem to over-emote when overseas.
In Spain last fall, Jessica Lange said, "It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It's humiliating."
Conservative John Malkovich caused an outcry last summer when he told a group of Cambridge students he'd like to shoot a certain anti-Israel, anti-American member of Parliament.
When Bush supporter R. Lee Ermey, a former Marine who played the scary drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, was asked by a London newspaper about a certain well-known diva's anti-war statements, Ermey thundered:
"Once again, Barbra Streisand has opened her alligator-sized mouth wide before her hummingbird brain has had a chance to catch up. Ms. Streisand does not speak for me or many other folks in this business."
Indeed, the biggest majority in Hollywood is silent.
Perhaps fearful that any position they might take could impede the flow of box-office receipts, most stars are straddling the fence.
Even Bruce Willis, White House spokesman for children in foster care, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who may run as a Republican for governor of California, are mum on Iraq.
Robin Williams, who has entertained troops in Afghanistan, says he's still making up his mind.
"It's difficult," he told the New York Post. "Winning the war would be quick. Occupying the country is the second part of the equation... . How long would we be there? And how much will it cost? Nine trillion dollars? Ah, what's that among friends?"
Even if the country goes to war and Americans rally around the President, Levinson said, the celebrities who advised against it aren't likely to suffer long-term effects.
He points to Jane Fonda, who won an Oscar for Klute in 1971, and sparked outrage the next year when she went to Hanoi to protest the Vietnam War. Her career went into eclipse, but by 1978 all was forgiven and she won another Oscar, for Coming Home.
"And if she made another movie today," Levinson said, "I've no doubt she'd be embraced."
