Hugh Jackman Continues Being Kinda Awesome

I’ve always liked him.  He starred in one of my favorite moves, The Prestige.  If I recall right, Howard Stern relayed an anecdote about Hugh Jackman carrying his wife into some awards thing or gala-type situation, because her leg was broken from skiing or something.  I thought that was a sweet image.

Anyway, I say he’s awesome because he offers up a political opinion that seems borne of thoughtfulness rather than being some kind of reflexive knee-jerk passive-aggressive attack on People Who Aren’t Like Me (which is what 90% of celebrity “politics” is).

Some might think he’s too sympathetic to Obama here. Eh. He’s not shouting at me angrily. That’s all I really ask for in return for my continued patronage.

In addition, frankly, I impose a rule on celebrity utterances: If they’re not pushing the leftist line, they’re probably acceding to the leftist line for political/career reasons. I started to think this after Dennis Miller would always push a specific formulation for attacking Bill Clinton. He was angry about Bill Clinton’s dalliances with Monica Lewinsky, he said, because Hillary Clinton was such a classy lady and deserved oh-so-much better than this.

Yeah… I sort of didn’t quite believe him on that “I’m just all about the honor and dignity of Hillary Clinton” line. It sounded to me like he was attempting to utter a Forbidden Belief in a way that would not get him fired and lose him friends.

So, anyway. Hugh Jackman’s saying he has so much sympathy for Obama? Eh, maybe he does. Or maybe in three years he’ll have a right-leaning radio show.

Whatever he believes or doesn’t believe, I think well of him for not using his perch to simply run down people. He was asked a question about policy and he answered on policy grounds. He did not use the Alec Baldwin Method of using “politics” as a dishonest cover for simply attacking people like a hateful bigot all liquored up on class prejudices (sometimes called “social racism,” and no, I didn’t make that up; liberal sociologists did).