I’ve never thought of Jon Voight as intellectually challenged, but it’s hard not to at least consider the possibility after reading his 7.28 Washington Times op-ed piece slamming Barack Obama. “The Democratic party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way,” Voight wrote. “It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.”

I finally get what Angelina Jolie has been on about all these years. (I think.) Most people reading the Voight piece will say, “Okay, the Times gave him the rope and he hung himself.” But you’d think an arch conservative working in an overwhelmingly liberal town would think about restraining himself for expediency’s sake, if nothing else.
My honest deep-down reaction is that I now have a reason to feel negatively about the guy. I’m not saying Voight is on the HE shit list (although the idea certainly feels good — just as it felt good to imagine the same thing last spring about Tina Fey when she became a rabid Hillary person on SNL), and I certainly don’t think a symbolic condemnation along these lines would matter much to anyone. Nonetheless, it’s going to be hard henceforth not to think of Voight as some kind of diseased wingnut.
I’ll always admire and respect Voight’s better performances (Luke in Coming Home, Reynolds in Enemy of the State, Ed in Deliverance, Howard Cosell in Ali, Manny in Runaway Train, FDR in Pearl Harbor, Jack in Desert Bloom, Paul Serone in Anaconda). And he’s obviously entitled to say and write whatever he wants. But it’s only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn’t pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, “Voight? Let him eat cake.”