Samizdata

Actor Bruce Willis refuses to fly to Britain ‘because his children pleaded with him not to’, cricketers Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick refuse to fly to India due to ‘security concerns’. Fine, that is their prerogative. It is also the prerogative of others to judge these ‘public’ individuals by their actions. In spite of the fact these people are far more likely to die whilst crossing the road, they allow misplaced fears to determine their actions.

Terrorism works when people allow themselves to become terrorised and that seems to have occurred with the timid of heart. Apparently Willis wants his children to react to even the most indistinct nebulous ‘threat’ by cowering behind the gated walls of their mansion. I hope his next role as an ‘action hero’ is greeted with the same derisory smirks and pithy asides that greeted Ann Heche when she played the heterosexual love interest for Harrison Ford in ‘Six days, Seven Nights’.

In less dissembling times, I think Willis, Croft and Caddick would have been called ‘cowards’.

So when Ann Heche’s former partner Ellen Degeneris stands up at the Emmy’s last night with a red, white and blue ribbon and says “What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”, it becomes clear that not only is she a very good comedienne, not everyone in Hollywood is cringing in terror and blaming it on ‘their children’.

So here’s to you, Ellen. As we always suspected, you are indeed the one wearing the trousers.