Hollywood-Hero.us
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Do You Remember when Hollywood was on our side?
"During other periods of our history when America had to defend our allies or ourselves, such as World War II, Hollywood heroes such as Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda and Elvis Presley, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin among others, donned our nations uniform and served their country with pride. They put their careers on hold to defend our country and our freedoms."
Buy the companion book on The Passion of the Christ!
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There has been much written and talked about on the web in the last week or so about Hollywood, boycotts and the state of free speech as it relates to the Hollywood community, our college campuses and the war in Iraq and against terrorism. HERO itself wrote an editorial yesterday in response to a column in the Detroit News last week. However, we think its time for cooler heads to prevail and to take a step back for a second. HERO has on its home page a list of past Hollywood-Heroes who have served this country with distinction in our past wars or are true humanitarians like Bob Hope and John Wayne. We received an email the other day asking us to take off James Whitmore from our list because he signed a statement created by Artists United to Win without War. James Whitmore served his country with honor and HERO will not be taking his name off our past HERO list. Now, Artists United To Win Without War, an adjunct to Moveon.org, is a democratic group, for sure. You can read the statement and who signed it, here. Its also true that Mike Farrell co-chairs Artists as well as serving as the public face for Not In Our Name, which is much more politically divisive and more personally directed toward dislike for the Bush Administration and their overall policies. Its under that auspice that actors such as Mr. Farrell, Martin Sheen, Danny Glover, Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon have used their public personas to denigrate President Bush and his policies. Hollywood-Hero has been very careful to make the distinction between the right to protest, freedom of speech and just disagreeing on a policy; to vitriolic hyperbole directed at an Administration solely because they are Republican. The actors that Hollywood-Hero has taken issue with have in our view gone over the line from civil discourse on an issue to blanket dismissal of any and all things Republican and conservative as led by President Bush and his Administration. Hatred and extremism is wrong no matter what side of the political aisle you reside on. A majority of the actors and actresses who signed the Artists United missive are not politically active and have not participated in or spoken publicly in the press conferences, media appearances or television ads that their leader, Mike Farrell has. And the statement signed by these artists is not the anti-American nonsense that is the Not In Our Name-Statement of Conscience, although there are actors who signed both of them. Finally, because boycott has been bandied around so much in the last month or so, we need to make the point once again, that a blanket boycott of Hollywood serves no one. But as was mentioned in our piece on May 24th, careful consideration of where consumers spend their hard earned money is not a boycott, but our own statement of conscience. We are not going to boycott James Whitmore because he signed that statement. He has said or done nothing we are aware of to denigrate our president or our country. He spoke his mind, once, on a statement which allowed that Saddam Hussein was a very bad guy who shouldnt have been allowed to own weapons of mass destruction. They thought weapons inspections were the answer, instead of a war. They agreed we had a problem in Iraq, they disagreed on the solution. Thats democracy and freedom of speech in action. A boycott against actors such as these serves no legitimate purpose and should give people pause when McCarthyism is bandied about. Hollywood-Hero will continue to respond to statements by celebrities who step over the line from polite political discourse. Well continue to advocate for a return to the time when people in Hollywood were forced to be more responsive to the people who pay their salaries, i.e., the public who buy their wares, and well continue the efforts to organize an alternative voice in Hollywood as no segment of society in America should be as one sided in their ideology as is Hollywood.
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