The Hollywood bubble

You may know actor/playwright Wallace Shawn from many movies from My Dinner with Andre to Clueless; in my mind, he’ll always be the guy who says “inconceivable” in The Princess Bride.

In the Sunday NY Times Magazine section, Shawn demonstrates that even pseudo-intellectuals can fall under the spell of liberal self-importance that suffuses every celebrity in La-La Land:

Well, there is a reason my brother and I are taking care of our own mother first, before we worry about your mother. It's great to love your own mother, but I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people's mothers around the world, they wouldn't commit the crimes they commit.

Wow. To read and believe this statement, you would have to believe that the liberation of Afghani women from the Taliban was less desirable than the “crime” of American intervention. What other crimes do ya got, Wallace? Deposing Saddam Hussein? I’m sure that Bush is tossing and turning every night thinking about how he failed to “recognize the full humanity” of Uday’s mom.

We're in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

As Dennis Miller said: “The Left is so busy saying John Ashcroft is Hitler, and President Bush is Hitler, and Rudy Giuliani is Hitler that the only guy they wouldn’t call Hitler was the foreign guy with the mustache who was throwing people who disagreed with him into the wood-chipper.”

Wallace, if this land of horror and brutality becomes too terrifying for you, I suggest you leave. Spend some time in North Korea or Zimbabwe. You’ll be back when you discover there are very few countries willing to afford you livelihood by jabbering over dinner in front of a camera.