I'll watch your movie but I won't have a beer with you

As someone whose politics these days are far from those of the typical Hollywood production, I am sometimes surprised to realize how many performers manage to be vocal activists for causes and political views that drive me through the roof, yet I am able to completely lose myself in their excellent work.

I have a simple litmus test: Would I go to almost any performance by this person, yet have no interest in having a beer/lunch/dinner with them?

Here are the ones that occur to me at the moment; for brevity, for each I'll indicate a defining thing I love and a defining thing I hate:

Steven Spielberg directing Schindler's List	Steven Spielberg with Fidel Castro
Sean Penn in Mystic River	Sean Penn meets and applauds Hugo Chavez
Tim Robbins in The Player	Tim Robbins at Nader rally
Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking	Susan Sarandon with Cindy Sheehan

Let me know of any you think I missed. Note that it's not enough to just be publicly supportive of dictators or wacky causes -- there has to be a limit to the size of this post! -- the person has to do excellent work in their day job...

Comments

[Guy T.]

Oddly enough, for all the diatribes I've read against "celebritards", the only one that sticks in my mind is George Clooney. I liked him a lot in From Dusk 'Til Dawn (or was it Till? That doesn't require an apostrophe -- gotta love the freedom of choice in English orthography). On an episode of South Park, his Oscar speech generated a Smug Cloud that ended up destroying San Francisco!

My personal "celebrity regret" is Janeane Garofalo. In college (circa 1990), my folks didn't have cable and my roommate Paul would bring videotapes of MTV from his folks' home in Tonawanda, NY. They had a show called the "Half-Hour Comedy Hour" that featured snippets of stand-up routines. Janeane's snippets were genuinely funny, and she was a hottie (IMHO), so I actually took the trouble of writing down her name for future reference. For all I know I may still have that tiny scrap of torn paper around here somewhere.

When I came back from my summer stint working on Grounds Crew for the Grand Teton Lodge Company in 1992, she was a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, and just as cute as I remembered. I adored her, what little I knew of her. Fast forward ten years and she's a boilerplate leftist. What a waste.

[Ronald Hayden]

I'm with ya on Janeane -- I first recall her both on the criminally underrated Ben Stiller Show and, before or around that time, on something she was hosting, probably on Comedy Central, called "Comedy Product" (Wikipedia doesn't list this, but I'm pretty damn sure I saw it...) I've watched her career ever since.

While these days I disagree with much of her politics, on reviewing her Wikipedia page, she doesn't appear to fall into the criteria for me to officially list someone in this post: That is, publicly supporting a person or cause so heinous that I would have a hard time being in the same room.

The closest is an item that, interestingly, apparently caused a split with Air America...from Wikipedia:

Garofalo was criticised by some of her listeners for comments she made on her April 28, 2006 show supporting Scientology-linked New York Rescue Worker's Detoxification Program, a controversial treatment for workers now suffering ailments from 9/11 clean-up efforts in New York City.

On July 14, 2006, Garofalo announced that she would be leaving her co-host position on The Majority Report. Although several reasons for her departure were cited, including her outside acting responsibilities, the relationship between Garofalo and co-host Seder had become increasingly strained, largely due to her support for the Scientology-linked program.

I have serious problems with scientology...however, I would still consider her support to be misguided, not a case of supporting something so obviously evil or stupid that she deserves "no beer" status.

Maybe I'm getting soft in my older age...