Reliving history and how we give these Hollywood idiots a free pass!

Do nominees rely on carefully orchestrated interviews and perfectly timed For Your Consideration ads to boost their chances of winning the trophy? Then there is Jon Voight, nominee in the Best Supporting Actor in a drama series category for Showtime’s Ray Donovan. He has momentum, coming off a Golden Globe win for his role as Ray’s abusive and ill-tempered but charismatic father, ex-con Mickey Donovan. But while his fellow nominees have largely kept a low profile and limited their public comments to their work, Voight has been making headlines with a string of politically charged and sometimes polarizing statements.

Just two days after the Emmy nominations were announced, Oscar winner Voight made a video statement on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show that featured blistering criticism of President Barack Obama, the Democratic party, the handling of the situation in Iraq, the Benghazi scandal, the treatment of conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and a number of other topics, including illegal immigration and the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case.

Then, just as Emmy voting got underway, Voight slammed Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry at a pro-Israel rally. And,  he blasted fellow actors Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem for signing, along with a number of other Spanish actors, directors, musicians and writers, an open letter denouncing Israel’s military action in Gaza. In an open letter, he called his fellow Oscar winners “ignorant” of Israel’s history and told them they should “hang their heads in shame.”  Maybe they should explain who bombed those trains in Spain and killed all of their innocent country-men?

None of these is out of character. Voight is a long-time Israel supporter and visited the country in 2008 as part of its 60th anniversary celebration. A year later, he penned another open letter slamming Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda for signing her name under an Israel-related petition. Voight accused Fonda of “aiding and abetting those who seek the destruction of Israel” for supporting a letter, in which John Greyson announced he would pull his film Covered from the Toronto International Film Festival in protest over the festival’s City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv.  A one-time liberal and fan of John F. Kennedy, Voight had spoken publicly about his political transformation. Since 2007, he has been a vocal Republican supporter and critic of Obama. Still, having a nominee for a major Hollywood awards show be so outspoken on so many occasions during the voting period is highly unusual.

This is the first peer recognition for Voight since he became a public face of the Republican party. His last nomination by his peers, at the 2005 SAG Awards, was surrounded by controversy, which he again addressed in an open letter. Nominated for the TV movie The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Voight was banned by the SAG board from attending the ceremony over a request he had made to go fi-core in order to do a friend’s low budget indie movie. He did not win and is currently seeking a first Emmy after three nominations.

Republicans are a minority in Hollywood, and some have blamed the lack of awards recognition by peers on their right political views. Kelsey Grammer accused the TV Academy of snubbing his performance in Starz’s dark drama Boss because he is one of few “declared, out of the closet Republicans.” Like Voight, Grammer had won a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press for Boss but he failed to land an Emmy nomination.

Awards experts are playing down the impact Voight’s comments would have on his Emmy chances, especially given how narrow the Emmy voting pool is. Casting their ballot in his category are only those from the acting branch who had volunteered to vote, providing they don’t have a conflict and haven’t voted in it the last two years in a row.

Being outspoken in Hollywood does not qualify automatically as a career suicide, and even speaking against the awards system not always backfires. It may have hurt Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar quest for The Master, but George C. Scott’s rejection of his 1962 Oscar nomination for The Hustler did not prevent him from scoring two more Oscar noms and a win for Patton in 1971 (which he also refused to accept.)

Whether Voight wins an Emmy or not, he gave a glimpse of his potential Emmy speech at the TCA press tour two weeks ago. “Let me just say, I feel very blessed and very fortunate to have had so many wonderful experiences as an actor,” he said. “I am really enjoying this family that’s making Ray Donovan. It’s almost like I earned this role over years of struggling and failing and experimenting and succeeding…” He praised the “wonderful artists” he works with on Ray Donovan and reached back into the past to praise earlier collaborators John Schlesinger, Dustin Hoffman, Hal Ashby and Andrei Konchalovsky.

One cable network that leans conservative does not make up for liberals controlling NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, The New York Times, Wash Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and the entire entertainment industry/culture. Somehow, one lonely cable network is favorable to the GOP and it’s too much.

And then you wonder about the liberal media and the White House and the lice in their beds?  This only serves to show who is between the sheets:

It has always fascinated me that Liberals get so angry at Fox News. Fox News is literally the ONLY news outlet on television that doesn’t lean Left and Liberals get outraged over the fact that there is one — ONE — News Network that supports the Right.

We also have to remember that between these sheets are the people who live, work and represent Hollywood –  the directors, etc., are not patriot Americans but foreigners who really hate this country – these are people who come here to make movies that tell the rest of the world how bad capitalism and freedom are; but, yet fill their pockets with money and thrive on capitalism and then tell the world how bad American people are.   At some point, maybe Liberals will ask themselves why the highest ranked cable news channel is Conservative.   At some point, maybe Liberals will understand that their Political views are cool in a classroom when mommy and daddy are paying the rent, but in the REAL world, you actually need to exhibit some responsibility.

Hilarious. You think you’re going to spin things around on Voight while Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are doing their outside act! Their acting is forgettable, and that despicable letter of theirs was memorable?   Jon Voight did good.

Amen. There is no so such thing as “free speech” in this country if you require somebody’s approval…especially in a profession that puts you in the public eye. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe – somehow you will pay. The Constitution may guarantee your right to speak out, but it will not insulate you from the consequences that befall you if the wrong people are offended. True heroes speak up and don’t care. I respect that even if I disagree.

Why do you perpetuate the myth that people like Cruz and Bardem are issuing “clarifications?” They put out statements accusing Israel of war crimes and murder (using those words exactly), then “clarify” that all they really meant was that killing was really bad and they are praying for both sides. As though they had not picked a team. That is not clarification, that is backpedalling, presumably in the face of criticism and/or advice from handlers. Even entertainment journalism is journalism, and you have some responsibility not to simply repeat the label they put on their “clarifications.” I guess they are still living with their Spanish Inquistion ancestry.

Frankly, someone should disavow all actors of the notion that most people give a damn about their opinions on geopolitical issues. But at least Voight doesn’t pretend that he didn’t say what he said because he gets a frantic phone call from his publicist.

In the end, the people of Hollywood live in a constant Fantasy land because the roles they play are for a certain period of time and once IT is done that is why it is so hard for them to accept the truth because if they don’t go along for the ride they are OUT OF WORK.  We as citizens are going to have to do a better job of filtering out these foreigners and not watch their movies because when we do – we accept their communist theories.

kommonsentsjane