If you ask me, we’re paying way, way too much attention to what Hollywood actors think. Come on. These people don’t know anything. They just ham it up in front of a camera as instructed by a director (who has half a brain), reading lines someone else wrote (who also has half a brain). Alfred Hitchcock famously thought actors were no better than cattle and treated them that way. When was the last time that “moo” counted as a significant … udderance (ouch)?

So when I read the story that British actor Gary Oldman shot his mouth off about Hollywood being run by Jews, and then apologized, I yawned. Sure, many senior executives in Tinseltown are in fact Jewish. But so what? The primary concern in the business world is the bottom line. Religion doesn’t dictate decisions, the marketplace does. Can Oldman figure that out? Apparently not.

“Ah, but Arnold,” a critic might object, “how do you explain that so many Hollywood studio heads are Jews, eh?” Fair question. The answer is the same as the answer to “how do you explain that so many Nobel Prize winners are Jews?” For some reason, the number of clever, ambitious and high-achieving Jews is far above average. I attribute it to “the matzo ball factor.” Or whatever. Compare Israel with the other Middle East countries. The Jews made the desert bloom; the Arabs still can’t feed themselves.

“Still” the critic might insist, “when ignoramuses like Gary Oldman and Mel Gibson mouth off about Jews, they open the lid of a Pandora’s Box a smidgen that should stay hermetically shut, right?” Sure, but in the larger scheme of things what these bozos think means virtually nothing. If someone hates Jews, they’ll do so regardless of Gibson or Oldman or whoever eggs them on or not; acting out such attitudes gets the attention of the police. Those who become anti-Semites because of a famous actor are equally, well … bovine.

So, what is to be done? Oldman and Gibson can think and say whatever they like. It’s a free country -- sort of. There is a penalty, however, and it’s the obvious one: Vote with your wallet -- though I admit that Oldman was hilarious as the evil Zorg in The Fifth Element. I’ll watch that movie again because Milla Jovovich is in it.

Arnold Cusmariu can be reached at aclogic1@yahoo.com.