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Hollywood takes on White House (Jennifer Harper, October 19, 2002, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Last month, singer Barbra Streisand faxed House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, Missouri Democrat, an indignant letter that accused President Bush of warmongering for the sake of the Republican Party.

"I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable and very frightening," Miss Streisand said at a Democratic fund-raiser in Hollywood last week.

"In the words of William Shakespeare, beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into patriotic fervor," she continued. "Patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind."

The statement was mistakenly gleaned from an Internet parody of famous authors rather than a Shakespearean work. Miss Streisand also called Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein an "Iranian" on her Web site Thursday; the geographical gaffe has since been corrected.

Some fault her strident approach.

"Once again, Barbra Streisand has opened her alligator-sized mouth before her humming-bird brain has a chance to catch up," actor R. Lee Ermy told the Sunday Telegraph. "Ms. Streisand does not speak for me or many other folks in this business."

Mike Daley sent us that one and the great Mr. Ermey deserves immense credit for not taking the easy shot, leaving her tapir-like snout out of the equation. As some of you will recall, Mr. Ermey was--with all due respect to notorious Kubrick flak, Ed Driscoll--the only good thing about Full Metal Jacket and therein has one of the classic movie lines of all time. Can't find the precise quote on-line, but it goes something like this--Ermey as the Marine drill instructor (which I believe he'd been in real life) is teaching his recruits to shoot. He asks: "Do you men know what Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman had in common?" To which, Matthew Modine, as the wiseguy hero of the film, responds: "They were both psychotic killers?" And Ermey barks out: "No! They were both trained to shoot in the United States Marine Corps! They are examples of what a dedicated Marine and his rifle can achieve."
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 21, 2002 11:38 AM