The Independent‘s David Usborne has written the latest piece about Jon Voight having become a kind-of poster boy for right-wing, “Friends of Abe” Hollywood, with of course a requisite mention of yours truly for that comment that I’m sick of trying to explain to the right-wing morons who don’t want to hear the specific, rational-minded truth to begin with.
A torrent of fresh hate-mails began pouring in yesterday (“you are a third rate little creep…you are eloi”) after Voight did his guest shot on The O’Reilly Factor. Here’s a portion of a transcript of what was said:
Bill O’Reilly: “Jon Voight wrote an op. ed for the Washington Times saying he didn’t trust obama on foreign policy issues among other things. We talked to [Jeffrey] Wells a few days agoand he denied that was a threat but it sure sounded like one. Joining us from Los Angeles is Jon Voight. I told Mr. Wells, this is exactly the same thing that happened in the 50’s when people who were left leaning were called Communist and blacklisted from the entertainment industry. Now what he wrote and what i have heard others say is that conservative actors run the risk of not being hired. Do you believe that?”
Jon Voight: “Well, let’s hope not, Bill. Of course, i had many friends among those people who were blacklisted and a very dark time for Hollywood. i don’t think anybody wants to go back to that. Just, you
know…all i can think of is that this fellow is a little out of line and hopefully he will recover his senses.
O’Reilly: Okay, but, you know, by putting yourself out there as a Mccain supporter and criticizing Barack Obama that this isn’t going to play very well in Hollywood. You are outnumbered about 100 to one out there.”
Voight: “I was doing an interview a couple of days ago and somebody was just very surprised that they had a conservative in Hollywood, and which is really, of course, it’s quite — it’s humorous on the one hand because obviously this is a democracy. We require dialogue and interaction and you need to have free speech and competing ideas in order for us to be healthy and grow.”
O’Reilly: “You are a little bit more outspoken. It is an emotional situation with Barack Obama. It isn’t like Kerry or Gore. It’s very emotional. and that’s what I saw from Mr. Wells, the Hollywood blogger. he admitted he got mad that you were criticizing his guy because some people, the sensitive community, but they have so much emotion tied into Barack Obama. And then in your Washington Times article you pretty much said ‘hey, look, I don’t believe the guy has got the chops to go up against the terrorists who want to kill us.’ That’s not an emotional argument. That takes it out of the emotional range.”