PrintJune 13, 2010
Clarice's Pieces
What would Ashton Kutcher say?
My friend Janet responds to vapid comments by asking that question.
If you don't know who he is, don't be embarrassed. I didn't either. He's a young, not terribly talented actor married to the older not terribly gifted but very beautiful Demi Moore. (Here they are in a very creepy "I Pledge" video they made upon the election of Obama as President.) He drives a Navi Star CXT (really humongous car)
While I haven't their exact addresses where you may feast your eyes on the gorgeous couple, I do know they live in Los Angeles, Sun Valley and Maine. They have a carbon footprint as big as the CBO underestimation of the cost of ObamaCare.
His choice of vehicle and the decision to have three households is perfectly okay with me. It's their business. It's just that given those choices, what he said this past week, is particularly preposterous.
Thinking about the BP spill and wanting to aid the rest of us by sharing his considered opinion of the matter he said:
"If you could go back to the Republican National Convention and look the guys in the eyes that were saying, ‘DRILL, DRILL, DRILL,' at the Republican National Convention, those guys, there you go... that's what we got, like, we did it, we drilled drilled drilled."
As Don Surber notes, however, it seems to have escaped this deep thinker and big car driver that the BP well and about 4,000 more like it were in place well before the Convention.
Kutcher notes with all sincerity and concern, "We have to find a different way to live off of this earth."
Let me know when you see him biking to the studio and moving into a solar powered yurt.
Kutcher is a major celebrity big thinker with little, vacuous ideas and phony proscriptions. But stupid is where you find it, And you don't have to go to Hollywood to find folks who say things as silly at Kutcher does,
There's Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, almost as much a fixture on the Washington pundit scene as the recently departed Helen Thomas, and certainly as full of brilliant insight. This week he informed us why, in his considered opinion, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman will lose in the general election for California's Senator and Governor.
He didn't persuade the Denver Post's David Harsanyi though. Harsanyi seems to think these candidates are electable:
Then we have Fiorina, who was once the CEO of Hewlett-Packard -- and thus clearly unprepared for political office. Progressive Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson points out that during a recent debate, this radical supported "the right of suspected terrorists on no-fly lists to buy guns."The woman is clearly one round short of a full clip, right? No one ever gets on that no-fly list by accident. If you're in the mainstream, you understand how loony it would be to permit an American citizen who hasn't committed a crime -- or is even accused of a crime, much less suspected of terrorism -- to have access to his or her constitutional rights. The folks in Gitmo? That's another story. And not radical.Then there's Meg Whitman. She ran eBay for a while, and now she's running for governor. Meyerson says she's out of step with California, as well.Fortunately, rational Californians have a choice this November. They can keep the state's economy humming by choosing the more sensible Jerry Brown, a man who once said that "the conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.""More welfare and fewer jobs!" is a great campaign slogan and unequivocally not crazy.
Who to believe, the Post's resident genius that tells us Fiorina and Whitman, both of whom held major CEO positions, are out of their mind cuckoo or this Harsanyi fellow?
Actually, the Post has at least two top entries in the Speak Like Ashton Kutcher contest this week.
Sally Quinn, the Post's resident home wrecker and religion columnist weighed in on the news that the Gores were separating. After giving it a lot of thought, she determined that the loss of the election to Bush in 2000 precipitated the 2010 split.
But she didn't stop there and deprive us of her bright thinking. She shared with us her belief that if the Gores can't make it to the finish line, none of us can:
And the interesting thing is that usually when something like this happens you get a sense of glee, people sort of saying, "I told you so, or I knew it," or whatever. I have only encountered sadness, and as you can imagine I've been on the phone with friends ever since I heard it yesterday and everyone feels as though somehow their own marriages have split up. You know watching the Gores is sort of looking at the possibilities of what a good marriage could be and when it doesn't work for them you sort of think "oh my God, maybe it's not possible."
So, to sum up the big news of the week in celebrity and pundit land: The BP spill is the Republicans' fault and we (but apparently not Kutcher) have to find a different way to live off of the land. Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are cuckoos with losing political messages and Jerry Brown has what Californians need and want (more welfare and fewer jobs). Finally, Bush broke up the Gore marriage and if they can't stay together probably none of the rest of us can.
