Selected portions of original article reprinted here.
Original content from the Toronto Star.
March 5, 2003
FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES
At a Feb.15 Hollywood protest,
he was just plain Martin Sheen. But playing the president makes Sheen a potent spokesperson.
New Star
Wars as celebrities face backlash Hollywood
starts protest campaign
MURRAY WHYTE ENTERTAINMENT
REPORTER
He's just doing what the president
of the United States should: Speaking openly, passionately and very publicly on his vision for the nation. And the message,
conveyed both at boisterous public rallies and through Internet campaigns, is clear: No war on Iraq.
Wait, now. Not that president. George W. Bush is pretty keen on the whole war idea, as we well know.
The other president, Josiah "Jed" Bartlett, of the extraordinarily popular television drama The West Wing
also known, though perhaps not as well, as actor Martin Sheen.
Sheen, a lifelong activist, is just one of hundreds of the famous and not-so-famous who are using their star status
as a stump from which to expound their own views on the pending war.
Conservatives, in return, have mounted their own campaign to vilify the celebrity anti-war effort as traitorous, anti-American
or, at best, naïve.
In between them sits a public whose sentiments waver between two sides of the issue the right of the vastly famous
to free speech, versus their dubious qualifications for the role of public opinion leader.
For a culture that descended long ago into celebrity obsession, the anti-war movement growing within the Hollywood
elite is simply the crystallization of a fact.
"It's like Hollywood and Washington have become one," said John Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University
in Connecticut.
Orman, with Brown University professor Darrell West, wrote the just-released book Celebrity Politics, which
describes how the cult of celebrity has hijacked political discourse.
"The press pays so much attention to them, they end up sucking all the oxygen out of the political debate," he says
of celebrity activists.
"They're systematically taking advantage of their position in society to monopolize public space."
They have not done so, however, without searing criticism from some quarters.
Aside from the predictable chidings of figures like Rush Limbaugh (he attacked Crow's "hypocrisy" for entertaining
troops in Bosnia in 1990), it appears that star power may not be making much of a dent in Bush's approval ratings.
Fox News Channel released a poll last week that said two-thirds of respondents wanted celebrities to stay out of political
issues.
A poll released by USA Today, CNN and Gallup found that 87 per cent of respondents said a celebrity lobby would not
change their view on Iraq.
Conservative accusations of anti-Americanism may hit stars where it hurts most in the ratings, at the box office or
at the record store.
"Boycott movie stars who are anti-war," was a highly popular message thread on an AOL chat board recently.
This week, Sheen speculated that his anti-war stance had created anxiety among executives at NBC, which airs The West
Wing. The fear is that Sheen's criticism of the real president might sour some viewers.
Outspoken stars have faced a torrent of hate mail from members of the public who take a different view.
As ego-damaging as the anti-celebrity backlash may be for a star accustomed to adulation, there is something positive
to be extracted from it, Orman said.
"If you have to rely on your favourite celebrity to get your viewpoint on Iraq, our system is in much more trouble
than we thought it was," Orman said.
"If (the government's) Number One opponent is Martin Sheen, they've got it made."
