While I was growing up in the liberal New York, my father, a rock-ribbed Republican and immigrant from communist Eastern Europe, was prone to hold grudges against entertainers. Thus, The Boycott was instituted to include a wide array of comedians, singers and movie stars. Their crime: political sedition.
There was, of course, the obvious. Jane Fonda, whose anti-Americanism is legendary, was a complete non-starter. Nor was there to be any mention of the frosty anti-Zionist Lynn Redgrave* at the dinner table. (Though, it’s difficult to imagine any normal kid actually wanting to mention, or even knowing who the hell, Lynn Redgrave was to begin with.) Even lesser-known lights such as Costas-Gravas and Martin Sheen were also banned outright.
So, come to think of it, I should probably thank dad for insulating my young mind from a needlessly torturous encounter with “The China Syndrome” or “Missing.”
The problem is, this boycott began to expand at such a precipitous pace that by its height I was exclusively watching movies featuring Jim Nabors and Burt Reynolds. I’m relatively certain, there was no pre-teen Jewish kid in the entire country — perhaps the world — who knew more about Hal Needham flicks.
Today, I can’t find a single star worth boycotting. I’ve come to accept there will be some perfunctory plotline that will cast capitalism as the sapling of all evil; I accept that every month another pretty face will grace us with an angry political homily.
Still, I don’t feel the anger or righteousness to ban them from my life. I can’t get myself to shun a Coen brothers film simply because one of its stars has the ideological sophistication of a field mouse.
Not after what I’ve seen. If Marlon Brando has the stones to send Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Oscar, I refuse to let a lightweight like Ed Harris get under my skin.
A case certainly be made for a boycott of Sean Penn. But his freeform nonsense is so majestically shallow and poorly informed, that he is actually hurting whatever cause he thinks he’s helping. (Was I the only guy who found “Dead Man Walking” uplifting?).
Alec Baldwin? He’s too freaking funny to ignore.
Are there actors or directors that I am impelled to boycott because they have offered some odious opinion — or, more odious an opinion than your average empty vessel? And I want to sacrifice something … so, no, Michael Moore and Janeane Garofalo don’t count.
*It was Vanessa Redgrave who was the anti-Zionist hoodlum, not Lynn.
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