Kill Your Idols

[Preface: I saved this post for last in this series of reprints because it's my favorite. It reads a lot like me, but written with such a bizarre Hollywood commentary that there was no way that I'd have put it on my site as it came out in the end (and I was between sites at the time, anyway). Chronologically, it's from right about the beginning of the war in Iraq, or maybe a day or two before. The above title, "Kill Your Idols," is from the title of a book edited by Jim DeRogatis, because I found it fitting with the message of the post itself.

There were about three people on Fubar who actually got the joke inherent in the following post, while the rest of the comments were vehemently for or against the war. While it was nice to get the readers agitated, most of them completely missed the point, which I thought was completely obvious, in that it's summed up in the last sentence, and that sentence is meant to include Affleck as well, which was meant to defuse any emotion involved with reading the post. Again, that really didn't work, because the readers didn't get the joke.]

In The Event Of War... - 2:35am March 19, 2003
Posted by Ben Affleck [Archives]

... be absolutely sure to listen to celebrities with whom you share political views, because we are your leaders. What I think about all of this is immaterial, but just about every actor (except me), actress (except J-Lo), singer (except J-Lo) and even a few of the homeless people on Wilshire (including three of J-Lo's former husbands) have put in their very public two cents about the impending war, regardless of the fact that their fifteen minutes of fame were up about eight years ago.

I mean, first you've got Charlie Daniels. Here's a guy who had been about as much out of the spotlight as Great White was until he released his "It's Not A Rag, It's A Flag" song last year, which was apparently offensive to someone or another, which only served to get him more press and therefore more record sales. He hopped on the pro-war bandwagon this week by writing a letter to the celebrity community, which several newspapers printed for some ungodly reason, essentially saying that anyone against the war is un-American and should be deported or some such thing, which speaks really well for his understanding of the Constitution. Then again, he's a desperate country singer who hasn't had a hit since "Devil Came To Georgia," so we can forgive him, maybe.

And then there's some other country singer with a pro-war song out right now, and we all know the real reason for doing this stuff. It's not because these singers support the war or anything like that, but because it's an opportunity to make some quick green on a hot-subject before their careers go belly-up when their listeners finally realize that country music hasn't been good since the early 80's, when the songs were all about drivin' your big rig.

And then on the anti-war side, you've got Mike Farrel, who did two things in the twenty years between his acting on M*A*S*H and Providence, and those two things were jack and shit. He's opposed to the war, but nobody cares because he's about as much in the public consciousness at this point as Cat Stevens.

Actually, Cat Stevens is back with a new anti-war song. Yes, this is true, but since he changed his name to Yusuf Islam a couple decades back, he's been harder to find than Salman Rushdie during the 80's. He's got a song out, but that's all I know, because no one's going to play a Yusuf Islam song, because he's about as well respected at this point as Jane Fonda was during the Vietnam War.

I ran into Keanu Reeves this week and asked him what he thought of the war, and he responded, "Dude..." I don't know if that was a yea or nay kind of, "Dude..." but that's his opinion. I think there might've been a, "Whoa..." in there somewhere, but I don't think it would matter.

What I'm trying to say here is, if you're not sure whether or not you support an American invasion of Iraq, don't listen to us celebrities. We're either out there because we want to boost sales on something or try to convince the world that we're not actually dead, though our careers might be. Pick up a newspaper, listen to talk radio (Mancow and Howard Stern do not count as talk radio), do anything but listen to us celebrities, because we're just good-looking idiots.


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