Reply #1: To the extent that the public seems to worship actors...

[Westegg]

...I guess this is okay. But my God, isn't it time the average American looked somewhere else other than to the "god-like" Hollywood star for his or her ideas about what is right and wrong with this country/the world at large/etc.? Some actors are smart people. Some are idiots. And yet their opinions about politics, war and peace, etc. seem to matter to so many, in direct relation to their fame. I don't get it. Why? Because they're "famous"? Because they're in movies? So fucking what? That's their job---that's what they do. They memorize lines and deliver them. Some of them do it quite well, but why, then, should I care about their thoughts about politics?

So few of them REALLY take a stand. Tim Robbins and Sue Sarandon do, and so does Marty Sheen. Brando did in the '50s and '60s. There are a few others. But true actor/activists ---willing to risk their fame and immense incomes for the sake of what they believe---are rare. Excuse me if I don't genuflect in front of some 23-year-old who makes $5-or-$10 million a year by appearing in bullshit money-making movies and now has an opinion about war, peace, whatever.