Hooray For Me!
A Column by Captain Spaulding

NOT GOING ANYWHERE? PROVOKE SOME SNICKERS

"International moving company to relocate personal belongings overseas. Cost: $3,500.

"Stretch limousine to carry two people from Malibu mansion to LAX airport. Cost: $200.

"Two first-class one-way tickets from LAX to Paris Orly Airport. Cost: $1,850.

"The sight of an airplane whisking Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger into self-imposed exile from American shores for the next four years. Cost: Priceless."

And so goes one of the more droll comments posted to chat rooms and guestbooks all over the Internet in the wake of the election of George Bush to the U.S. presidency. For those of you who stepped out to get the mail and got locked out of the house for the past six months, Hollywood actor and self-styled political activist Alec Baldwin has been fending off accusations that he had vowed to leave the country if Bush was elected.

Those of us who expect nothing but inanities and weird gibberish from Hollywood glitterati may snicker at his conundrum. But to vast segments of the populace, Baldwin’s vow was no laughing matter. The credit card commercial parody cited above is extremely mild compared to most of the anti-Baldwin spew flying around the ether. Most of it contains the blunt hatred, barnyard epithets, and botched spelling of stuff that in a bygone era would be scrawled on something tied around a brick that’s thrown through someone’s window. Suffice it to say that ol’ Alec hit a real sore spot with a lot of people.

The story emerged in September from the website of fedora’ed gadfly Matt Drudge, who passed along the gist of an interview that Baldwin’s actress wife Kim Basinger had given to the German magazine Focus. In it, Basinger said that her husband had sworn to go into exile if the Republicans won the White House in November, 2000, an oath in which she devoutly believed because her hubby is the most honest guy that she knows. The hue and cry rose immediately once the mainstream press got ahold of Drudge’s tidbit, and Baldwin’s personal website was soon swamped with the vile invective of outraged Americans who wished to subject the star of The Hunt For Red October and Miami Blues to whatever passes these days for a tar-and-feathering. Baldwin issued a quick denial that he had ever said such a thing, or that his wife had ever granted an interview to that magazine. Focus quickly retorted that they had the interview on tape, and would give out the transcript to anyone who was interested. Baldwin has an established track record for rash political blather -- anyone remember his Conan O’Brien rant during the Clinton impeachment imbroglio when he shouted on national television that people should stone Congressman Henry Hyde and his family to death? Given that, it’s not hard to take the word of a German magazine over his.

Basinger’s comments in Focus came in the wake of an earlier statement by noted American film director Robert Altman (who’d like to be known as the genius behind M*A*S*H and Nashville, but whom I will uncharitably refer to here as "the guy who directed Dr. T and the Women"). Altman had previously announced at a French film festival that he’d be going the expatriate route if Bush won the election. Unlike Baldwin and Basinger, Altman refused to deny or retract his statement. I have no idea as to the current whereabouts of Altman, but I’ll take him at his word that he meant it. Actors have plenty of license to be controversial, but those with an eye to their career path will pick and choose their controversies carefully (ask Jane Fonda if she’d go to Hanoi if she had to do the sixties all over again). Directors, on the other hand, see themselves as artistes, which is French for "people who consider it their obligation to irritate the teeming masses". The fact that Altman basically makes his living by turning sacred cows into Big Macs for those same teeming masses apparently doesn’t enter into his thinking on this subject.

Zany political commentaries that came laced with warnings were not the sole province of leftist celebrities in this election. Over on the right, Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist Greenville, SC college started by and named after his granddaddy, had his own humdinger of a threat. He averred that if Al Gore was elected president, the country would be locked in the thrall of forces so evil that the 2000 election would be the last plebiscite ever held in a free America. Strangely, this statement got very little play in the media; it certainly was dwarfed by the Baldwin and Altman pronouncements. I say strangely because the press reacts with thinly-veiled glee whenever they have the opportunity to file stories with the words "Bob Jones University" in them. It’s like the opening scene of The Wild Bunch, in which the Mexican children watch the fire ants consume the scorpion; they’re positively delighted by the spectacle of something so primitive, violent, and revolting. The only guess I can fathom regarding the media non-reaction to BJ3’s stupid statement is that they’d rather focus on Baldwin’s stupid statement instead because Baldwin scores higher on the hunk-o-meter than Jones.

But Jones is a Southern fundamentalist leader. Apocalyptic doomsayings are as much a part of his milieu as leatherette King James Bibles and pompadours. While we’re all familiar with the political sermonizing of liberal showfolk like Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg, Warren Beatty, and the comedy team of Sarandon & Robbins, this isn’t Hollywood business as usual. Baldwin obviously stepped over a line here. It’s one thing to grouse about the election because your boy didn’t wind up valedictorian of the Electoral College. It’s quite another to use it as a pretext to abandon the U.S. of A. I don’t care if you’re on the Roy side or the G. Biv side of the political spectrum, threatening to put America in your rearview mirror if the ballot doesn’t bounce your way is not an option if you want to stay in the public’s good graces.

I think that Baldwin figured this out pretty quickly (or his publicist did), which is why he went into vehement-denial mode so quickly. What will be interesting is whether or not this incident affects his box office juice. The jury’s out so far on that. Americans are a forgiving sort, one might say; look at how they eventually accepted back aforementioned Tinseltown prodigal daughter Jane Fonda. But the future Mrs. Ted Turner worked her way back into America’s good graces by releasing a workout tape in the 1980s that did boffo business. If you come up with a way to take five pounds off of the hips of the average housewife, this country will forgive you even if you wipe your butt with the American flag on CNN and get a swastika tattooed on your forehead.

Whether Baldwin actually feels the rage of the lumpen proles that he’s antagonized is another matter. Suffice it to say that the beautiful people whose faces adorn the magazine rack of the supermarket checkout line tend to have a Marie Antoinette outlook towards the common man. But Baldwin, who learned a thing or two about damage control after the Conan O’Brien incident, may at least be showing signs of making peace with the new regime in Washington. Last week he donated his winnings from a celebrity edition of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire to the Performing Animal Welfare Society, a shelter for abandoned circus and zoo animals near Sacramento. The Society is using his money to build a new lake for some of the animals. Which animals, you ask? The elephants.

CAPTAIN SPAULDING

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