There are Sensible People in Hollywood

First a confession: I'm still in full-blown vacation mode. I was in northern New England all last week and have been enjoying various aspects of the Ocean State with my family this week. I have been tempted to post about the impending revelation of the Warwick Teachers contract, but I'll wait until the details are finally released (and perhaps after the scheduled School Committee meeting tomorrow).

Now, since you've been fully informed of my current political lightheadedness, I offer this:

Hollywood heavyweights Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Rupert Murdoch and more than 80 other stars played against type and entered stage right yesterday with an ad condemning Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and terrorists everywhere.

“We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” the full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times reads.
Whatever will the crowd at Spago think?

The undersigned also include La-la luminaries Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton of “Everyone Loves Raymond” and William Hurt.

Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names. Other Hollywood powerplayers who signed their John Hancocks included Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul Haim Saban.

The move is a variation on the usual script in Tinseltown, where the political noise has been predominantly anti-Bush, anti-war on terrorism and anti-war in Iraq from high-profile stars such as George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

But this alternate A-List appeared to steal some of President Bush’s “A” material with lines like: “If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs.”

This doesn't mean that all of these people are conservatives. However, at least they're on the right side of one of the "big things" of our times. That can't be said for everybody. Now, back to serious political issues. Andrew?