« Catching up. . . | Main | Snuppy, the franken puppy. . . »
August 4, 2005
Minnie Driver??? Go figure. . .
Never expected this one at all. I just added every one of her movies to my Netflix queue.
--Jason
UPDATE: Some people are having problems viewing the link with certain firewall software. So I'm quoting the reference for those that are having difficulty:
I suppose most readers around these parts would reckon that actors should stick to acting, and keep their political opinions to themselves.But what about these opinions?
"People think more aid will help, but it won't," said Ms. Driver, an actress who is working on her second music CD. "Trade is the surest way of decreasing the savage amount of poverty in our world. These countries have got to be able to trade fairly."And the point is, by "fairly", she does not mean being paid artificially high prices; she means getting rid of agricultural subsidies in the rich countries.
It was never a practical project to silence the acting profession. These people are famous. Having acquired their fame, they then want to use their fame to do good, and in the process to become even more famous. This is only natural, especially when you consider that doing good and being heroic is what, according to the entertainments these people spend their lives making and acting in, life is all about. Trying to stop famous actors from expressing what they consider to be virtuous and heroic opinions in public is like trying to stop the wind from blowing or the sea from being wet.
No, the task that faces us is not to silence the acting profession from ever opining about goodness. That would be impossible, to say nothing of censorious and unpleasant. Rather is our task to change the definition of goodness that actors of sufficient fame to care about such things reach for when they get to the public virtue stage in their careers, and to make goodness really mean goodness.
Ms. Driver's pronouncements concerning the superiority of trade over aid as a means of rescuing the world's poorest people is evidence that some progress is being made along these lines.
Many actors surely already believe such things, on the quiet. But it is still a fine step forward when one of them feels able to say such things in public.
Hope that helps some of you that e-mailed me.
Posted by JasonColeman at August 4, 2005 7:46 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.jasoncoleman.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/141
