Celebrity Injustice
Loudmouth moviemakers don’t know their audience.
So begins a recent Associated Press story about a "threatened boycott" of MCI for its pitchman employment of the antiwar actor who also voices support for Fidel Castro. According to Glover and two law professors quoted in the article, the outcry directed at outspoken celebrities like himself and Sean Penn indicates that the country is teetering on the precipice of McCarthyism.Glover’s political illogic aside (endorsing the Cuban people’s "right to self-determination" under a regime that doesn’t offer free elections and executes or imprisons anyone trying to flee), the question is why so many celebrities still seem to confuse free speech with censorship.
Take Sean Penn. (Please.) The actor filed a lawsuit against producer Steven Bing for allegedly firing the actor from a $10 million payday after he returned from his Iraq fact-finding mission having found no facts — which he nonetheless recited endlessly to Larry King. The predictable result, just before a war that at the time had the support of at least half the country, was public outrage — and his unhiring.
Now, $10 million paydays are a wonderful thing, and so is the freedom to say whatever’s on your mind, but they may not be wholly compatible. More and more often, the list of actors who command that — Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, among others — are all talented folks who command huge salaries not because they’re necessarily the most talented actors around, but because over the years they’ve built up an extraordinary amount of goodwill among the movie-going public. In the trade parlance, Cruise, for example, "opens a film" — meaning that his millions of devoted fans plunk down ten bucks at the box office on that all-important first weekend in order to see what they undoubtedly call "the new Tom Cruise movie."
National Review nails it with this one – - just another reminder for all of you keeping track at home: freedom of speech is not consequence free. You have the right to say it – but you certainly aren’t guaranteed good reviews.
Sean Penn is a moron who never seems to stop. He has now taken out a full page add in the New York Times (he probably paid about $135,000 for it)to tell the world how he was right, and that he was “hit by a tidal wave of media misrepresentation, and even accusations of treason.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59687-2003May30.html
Whiney little wimp.
Sean Spicoli (sp) didn’t even have the full-page article edited. They made fun of his bad grammar on FOX.
Regarding Danny Glover, I thought I’d throw my hat in the email-bombing campaign with a note reminding MCI that Glover is no stranger to the looney left. Here’s the reply I got from MCI:
Thank you for contacting MCI ® e-Customer Service.
I have received your email regarding our spokesperson. We sincerely value your opinion about our advertising.
Our contract with Danny Glover runs through January 2004 and we intend to honor our contract (emphasis mine). With the campaign having run its course, we are moving to new creative campaign, which is more closely tied to our new MCI corporate branding campaign in terms of its look and feel.
Sincerely,
Billy
e-Customer Service
Interesting. You’ll recall that Joe Scarborough got a different email from them stating that “MCI would no longer be using Danny Glover as its spokesman.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/914467.asp
Mixed messages from MCI.
The email I got stops short of detailing what kind of new ad campaign they have in store, and whether or not Glover will be involved. What jumps out is the admission that they will honor their contract, which seems to imply that we will be seeing Glover pitching for MCI in the future.
I had MCI call my house last week, asking me to switch service. I told them if they could guarantee that Danny Glover would no longer be their spokesman, they could sign me up today.
The woman didn’t even know how to reply.
Needless to say, I’m not an MCI customer today.
Good for you, Cam! (FREE CAM!)
Maybe MCI can provide services to Cuba, ya think?
Cuba – and only Cuba.
Yeah, they called me but fortunately I was at work.
Keep whining Sean, nobody is stopping you nor is anyone going to keep you from making a fool of yourself.
Congratulations Sean … You are a true ROCKET SCIENTIST! Expect a call from NASA soon.
You picked one of the two most compromised news papers in the country for your full page ad. Your credibility of your verbage is about the same as the paper that printed it. Way to go!
How about boycotting Mel Gibson’s new film which will intensify hate or support production of accurate films about the folks who brought the kids to see lynchings?
How about boycotting Mel Gibson’s new film which will intensify hate or support production of accurate films about the folks who brought the kids to see lynchings?
help/apeal va claim before7/9/04
3 sucide attemps daughter
wife open heart surgery
va denied medical care
vet retired 20yr a criple
could not work. faimly suffered devastation
vet pain meds/ morphine
percocet/zoloft/ daughter
on zoloft/va denies seriouness of situation
for 3 yrs/need help apealing disibility claim
before jul 9 2004/ vet seriouly depressed, could not help his faimly. vet nightmares from 1998 violent, hit wife by accident
pass to SCARBOROGH COUNTRY NEED PH# NAME
SENATORS TO ASK FOR HELP
SENATOR KENNEDY
help/apeal va claim before7/9/04
3 sucide attemps daughter
wife open heart surgery
va denied medical care
vet retired 20yr a criple
could not work. faimly suffered devastation
vet pain meds/ morphine
percocet/zoloft/ daughter
on zoloft/va denies seriouness of situation
for 3 yrs/need help apealing disibility claim
before jul 9 2004/ vet seriouly depressed, could not help his faimly. vet nightmares from 1998 violent, hit wife by accident
pass to SCARBOROGH COUNTRY NEED PH# NAME
SENATORS TO ASK FOR HELP
SENATOR KENNEDY