R. Lee Ermey, the ex-Marine who became a well-employed actor after playing the loud-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket, has bought the farm. He was only 74, but he was a right-winger who hated Obama and said some fairly awful things, and as a result had trouble getting hired by liberal Hollywood over the last few years. (Or so I’ve read.) I was about to say “Tough shit, twinkletoes!” but then I thought, “Naah, ease up and back off….don’t do a Bob Clark.”
The Hartman yellathon is Ermey’s masterpiece. (I would actually call it a comic masterpiece.) He was good but only sufficiently so in his other acting roles. He had plenty of work over the 33-year period that followed Full Metal Jacket, or from ’87 until Ermey put his foot in his mouth and skull-fucked himself in 2010.
From Ermey Wikipage: “On December 10, 2010, Ermey denounced the Obama administration’s economic policies while speaking at a Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots rally, stating that it was difficult to raise money for the charity because ‘the economy sucks’. He went on to say, ‘We should all rise up, and we should stop this administration from what they’re doing because they’re destroying this country. They’re driving us into bankruptcy so that they can impose socialism on us, and that’s exactly what they’re doing, and I’m sick and damn tired of it and I know you are too.’
“The following January Ermey posted an apology on his website: ‘I regret that I delivered a monologue that was inappropriately critical of the President. My comments were misguided and emotionally biased, and for that I am truly sorry.’
“Nonetheless Ermey later told TMZ that he was ‘fired’ by GEICO, which is owned by noted Obama supporter Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway, with whom he made the above-mentioned 2010 ‘Drill Sergeant’ commercial, because of his political beliefs. The insurance giant also removed Ermey’s commercial from their official YouTube channel.
“Ermey subsequently stated that his anti-Obama views had caused him to be blackballed by Hollywood, resulting in a lack of new film roles for him. Ermey knows Donald Trump Jr., and stated that he was confident that should Donald Trump become president, ‘Our Second Amendment rights [will be] solid as a rock.'”
