Actors

Robert De Niro

I have noted this before: Acting is a socially-acceptable form of lying. On the stage, actors are not the persons they are pretending to be. The roles that actors play are the creation of someone else and yet they can slip into these new personalities with realistic and convincing aplomb. Any brilliance that they may exhibit is generally someone else’s making. Therefore, excellent actors and actresses are excellent liars by definition. That is why thespians need not ever be paid attention to when they are expounding on political or moral issues ... except when they are on the stage speaking the lines of (hopefully) real thinkers.

Afterthought: Because so many actors have become politically active, I find it more difficult to suspend disbelief when I see them acting (as best I can) ... therefore movies have become less entertaining ... and I have less need to see them. I wonder if others are so affected?

Obvious Truth #43

Acting is socially condoned lying. The better the thespian, the more convincing the liar.

Mexican Foreign Aid

This is Academy Awards weekend ... wherein Oscar, the golden statue that thespians aspire to most, has just appeared on Hollywood Boulevard … doing what actors and actresses there do best … snorting two lines of cocaine … see: Hollywood Reporter Story. This is a right-on social commentary by the street artist, Plastic Jesus, about the culture of Glitter Town and how magnanimous the people there are to our neighbors to the south, Mexico. The residents of Hollywood and its surrounds send billions of dollars of foreign aid every year to this country in the form of payment-in-kind for this white-powder elixir … see: The Wages of Sin.

Matter of fact, it is surprising that the organizers of Oscar-night … you know that orgy of self-aggrandizement … do not pack those traditional multi-thousand-dollar goodie bags proffered at these festivities … with at least a 10 cent bag of this omnipresent staff of life.

Yet these good-looking and well-appointed frauds there feel it is their moral obligation to point out cinematically any slight failings in the rest of American society.

Isn't that special?

Afterward: For those of you who doubt my reference to billions of dollars of drug money going to Mexico ... here is a picture of $22 billion siezed at a Mexican drug lord's estate. And to read the details of same, please go to: Makes the World Go Around. Muse on this while you watch the Oscars on Sunday night. For this very reason, I, for one, won't be a viewer.

After Afterward: I came across a breakdown of what is in the $125,000 goodie bag (swag bag) of the Oscar nominees and it does not contain even one ounce of cocaine (but it does include a vibrator) ... see:Variety Story.