Pen-Elayne on the Web

Celebrity First Amendment Update

Via Maru Soze (link at sidebar), on whom "I am having a crush" as one might say on alt.showbiz.gossip - good article yesterday by Don Hudson in the Charlotte Observer about the Baseball Hall of Fame doofus President (a former Reagan press aide, if you hadn't heard) cancelling the "Bull Durham" festivities because of a disagreement with the film's star's political views which have, you know, bupkiss to do with baseball. Honestly, if I have to (as I mentioned on April 6) sit through "God Bless America" instead of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" every single friggin' 7th inning stretch until Dubya is finally gone from office, I think Petroskey can deal with a couple peace signs waved by Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon - which I'm guessing would have been the extent of the airing of their political views at the Hall of Fame, considering that was all they did at the Oscars, but of course we'll never know.

Speaking of the Oscars, I think I've figured out why the Hall of Fame thing pisses me off so much and the campaign by Ellison Horne and Lisa Rein (link at sidebar) "urgently calling for an investigation of the broadcast by CNN and CNN Headline News's reporting of Michael Moore's acceptance speech last month at the Academy Awards" seems a bit... I dunno, not misguided but almost like a weird priority to me. I found the whole "were the boos augmented during his speech because of the placement of the microphones" an interesting sidebar when I first read it on Mark Evanier's blog, but by the time the late-night comedy shows were talking about it the "who cares what some yutz stagehands do" brouhaha had seemed to already pass its point of relevancy, certainly as compared with real-life considerations like oh, you know, people actually dying in a war we're making. Moore wasn't prevented from speaking out against Bush and the war (in fact, he garnered no boos when he made the same speech at the ICF Awards the day before, and he took the stage at the Oscars to thunderous applause), pre-release DVD sales of Bowling for Columbine are outstripping those for Chicago, Moore's got funding out the wazoo for Farenheit 911 and has been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/ "The Awful Truth." And the Dixie Chicks are doing just fine against "but they said they're ashamed of the President, they're baaaaad people" whining. And Pearl Jam probably hasn't lost all that many fans either. There's no stupid record-burning hysteria going on like in the "more popular than Jesus" days. Or even the disco-hating days, for that matter!

And yeah, I know Sarandon and Robbins aren't hurting for work either. But I suppose that, to me (and I admit I could be splitting hairs here), it's the difference between speech ridicule and speech prevention. The first action is the very practice of the First Amendment, and a time-honored tradition besides; people have made fun of celebrities' utterances since long before I was born. The second is quite the opposite, a refusal to even let the celebs get to the point where they might say something for the media to trivialize and disagreeing citizens to mock. But I dunno, a part of me's thinking maybe it's all just alt.showbiz.gossip when you get right down to it anyway. When we grow up in such a media-saturated coverage that one of our first thoughts, upon hearing about the looting of museums filled with ancient and precious artifacts, is "gee, the recovery of those antiquities might make for an interesting plotline of an Indiana Jones or Lara Croft story," it's probably to be expected.