‘Guys, she’s so way out of your league.’
‘My hero!’ she laughed.
‘Anything for a damsel in distress.’
‘I’ll come on your show soon. I just need something serious and intelligent to talk about.’
‘The Something About Mary sequel?’ I suggested.
At which point I felt a sharply pointed shoe connect with my ankle.
As I moved on, a firm arm gripped my shoulder.
‘I’ll do your show if you pay me forty dollars,’ said Chevy Chase.
The Dalai Lama blesses me with a Tibetan robe after our interview. An extraordinarily happy man.
CHAPTER 7
MONDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2012
There was another horrific school shooting today.
A young man called Thomas Lane randomly shot six students at Chardon High School in Ohio.
Three died, three were wounded – one of them left paralysed.
My special guest tonight was political commentator and comedian Bill Maher, who tried to explain America’s relationship with guns.
‘We love guns. I’d love someone to make a speech and say, “OK, we’re never going to get rid of all the guns. But do we have to adore them, do we have to love them so much?”
‘I look at guns like antibiotics. Sometimes you need them, but I don’t kiss my antibiotics, I don’t polish them, I don’t worship my amoxicillin. If I need it, it’s there. You know? But this country just has a very bad relationship with guns.
‘Rick Santorum likes to talk about theology. This is a theology in this country. Guns are a religion. They’re next to godliness for a lot of people. And you wonder what they’re doing with them. I know they love to blow the brains out of innocent animals for fun, I guess that’s one thing. But they also have this fantasy in their head, if you talk to a lot of right-wingers, that somehow they read the Second Amendment as necessary because we might have a tyranny in this country. Some sort of alien totalitarian menace might take over, and they’re not saying who specifically, but then they will have to rise and take this country back.
‘They really have this fantasy in their head that they can take over the government. I mean this may have made sense when the Second Amendment was written, when maybe you could defeat the government when everybody had muskets.
‘But now the government has, you know, nuclear weapons, the F-22 and the Marine Corps, and it’s probably unlikely that Vern and Earl are going to be able to take over the government no matter how much they dislike it.’
I asked him how he countered the argument that many Americans see it as their constitutional right to have guns.
‘Well, of course, it’s in the Constitution – but where does that end? The Constitution could not foresee assault weapons, or bazookas. Should we be able to have those? What about a tank? What about a nuclear weapon if you could afford it?
‘I mean it’s ridiculous. No one is saying that we’re attempting to create a gun-free society. We know that’s impossible. Just reasonable limits. Make sure that the mentally ill people don’t get them. Make sure you can’t get them at these gun shows, these loopholes.
‘And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with saying we could rewrite the Constitution. The Constitution itself was rewritten. After all, it is the Second Amendment.’
Everything Maher said makes complete sense to me.
Why doesn’t it to so many Americans?
TUESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2012
Another live midnight show, after the Arizona/Michigan primaries.
Andrew Breitbart was on the panel again, this time in the studio with me in L.A.
We had a laugh before going on air about the alleged ‘raised finger’ incident.
‘Honestly, I would never do that,’ I protested. And I wouldn’t, well, not on air anyway.
‘I believe you,’ he replied, his face etched in disbelief.
I think these political bloggers are so immersed in spinning conspiracy theories that they see them everywhere.
But Breitbart’s good TV, and I like having him on the show.
He’s smartened up his act too, appearing in my L.A. studio tonight in a suit, and clean shaven.
‘Is this whole new image for me?’ I joked.
‘Yes! I cleaned up and got my aerodynamic fashion for you!’
I thanked him afterwards.
‘See you at the next primary night?’
‘Definitely.’
THURSDAY, 1 MARCH 2012
Andrew Breitbart is dead.
He collapsed of a suspected heart attack while walking in Brentwood, an L.A. neighbourhood. He was forty-three, and married with four children.
His appearance on my show on Tuesday was the last time he was seen on television.
I feel strangely very sad for someone I didn’t know that well, had clashed with a few times and with whom I disagreed about almost everything.
But I loved his passion, for politics and for life.
FRIDAY, 2 MARCH 2012
The issue of gay rights, and gay marriage in particular, is getting hotter by the day. Seven states have now legalised it, with more set to follow.
And a new poll released this week by NBC/Wall Street Journal shows that public opinion is moving incredibly fast in the US.
Overall, 49 per cent of Americans now support gay marriage, with 40 per cent opposed. This is almost a direct reversal of the same poll results in 2009, when support was at just 41 per cent and opposition at 49 per cent.
The debate has sparked fury on both sides, and as someone who was brought up a Catholic, I understand how people with strong religious conviction feel about it, and respect their Bible-based beliefs.
BUT – and it’s a big but as far as I’m concerned – being opposed to something doesn’t give you the right to be a bigot. And some of the vile, abusive rhetoric being spat out by so-called ‘Christians’ about gays and gay marriage is disgustingly indefensible.
Particularly when many of those spitting it out also laughably claim to stand for ‘freedom’.
Yesterday afternoon, I taped an interview with an actor called Kirk Cameron.
He was the heart-throb young star of a smash hit sitcom in the eighties about unruly teenagers called Growing Pains. But he hasn’t done much since.
I’d never heard of him, and wasn’t keen to do the interview.
But Jonathan persuaded me by saying: ‘He’s become a fervent born-again Christian in recent years, so he may be quite vocal about social issues.’
‘But who cares what some ex-child star thinks of anything?’
‘Just try it. It may be better than you think.’
I still didn’t think it was worth it, but Jonathan’s instincts are very good, so I agreed to do it anyway.
Cameron seemed a very respectful, polite man when he walked out on set, and we exchanged the usual niceties.
Then we started the interview, and fairly soon into it, I asked him: ‘What is your view of gay marriage?’
He smiled. ‘I feel like I just got imported into the Christine O’Donnell interview you did back in August … I believe that marriage was defined by God a long time ago. Marriage is almost as old as dirt. And it was defined in the garden between Adam and Eve, one man, one woman, for life, till death do you part. So I would never attempt to try to redefine marriage. I don’t think anyone else should either. So do I support the idea of gay marriage? No, I don’t.’
‘Do you think homosexuality is a sin?’
‘I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilisation.’
Good grief. Had he really just said that? What an astonishing comment.
Jonathan was right – this was already turning into great television.
‘What do you do if one of your six kids says, “Dad, ‘I’m gay”?’
‘I’d sit down and have a heart to heart with them just like you would with your kids.’
‘If one of my
sons said that, I’d say, “That’s great, son. As long as you’re happy.” What would you say?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say, “That’s great, son, as long as you’re happy.” I’m going to say, “You know, there’s all sorts of issues that we need to wrestle through in our life. Just because you feel one way doesn’t mean we should act on everything that we feel.”’
I then said, ‘Some people would say that telling kids that being gay is a sin is in itself incredibly destructive and damaging in a country where eight states now have legalised gay marriage.’
‘Yes, but you have to understand that you yourself are using a standard of morality to make that statement telling people such-and-such of a behaviour is sinful, and that is terribly destructive.’
‘What’s your view of abortion?’ I asked.
‘I think that it’s wrong.’
‘Under any circumstances?’
‘Under any circumstances.’
‘Even rape and incest?’
‘I think someone who is ultimately willing to murder a child, even to fix another tragic end, a devastating situation like rape or incest, is not taking the moral high road. I think that we’re compounding the problem by also murdering a little child.’
‘Could you honestly look a daughter in the eye if she was raped and say you have got to have that child?’
It’s become a preferred question of mine in this debate because I’m genuinely fascinated by the answer, to see if private reality overrides public position.
‘Yes. Because I love my daughter. I love that little child. This is a little creature made in God’s image. Imagine if you were the result of that and you had been aborted. We wouldn’t be here having this conversation. So I value life above all things.’
The discussion moved onto freedoms.
‘I’m concerned that we’re losing what we want to hang on to,’ Cameron said. ‘I want to understand, where do we get these freedoms from? If the government gives them to us, they can take them away. But if they’re given to us by God, they cannot be taken away.’
‘When you talk about freedom,’ I replied, ‘a lot of what we talked about before is about stopping people having freedom, isn’t it? About stopping them getting married if they’re gay, about stopping them having an abortion if they get raped. That’s not freedom. That is stopping people having the right to do things they want to do.’
‘Well, you have to understand that there are those of us who hold values very dear and precious to us.’
‘Freedom is fine as long as we subscribe to your values.’
‘Or your values.’
It was a fascinating conversation. And one that I suspect many Americans are having with each other as the Republican primary race becomes more focused on social issues.
But I suspect Mr Cameron will regret some of his remarks. I can’t remember any celebrity being so overtly, publicly homophobic like this for a long time.
Sure enough, within minutes of the interview airing tonight, he began trending worldwide on Twitter. Most of the tweets expressed blind fury, though some also defended his right to freedom of speech.
I was asked by a paparazzi camera crew in Beverly Hills tonight for my reaction to Cameron’s comments, and tried to be as fair-minded as I could.
‘I think he was pretty brave,’ I said. ‘He was honest about what he believes. And I don’t think he was expecting the furore it created. But many will find his views antiquated.’
Incredibly, my own comments also started getting a negative reaction – from people appalled I had used the word ‘brave’ to describe Cameron.
Yet surely that’s exactly what he was?
The dictionary definition of brave, after all, is ‘ready to endure pain and danger’. You don’t have to agree with someone to think he’s brave – and saying what Cameron said, on national television, in a country as divided on the issue as America, was indisputably indicative of someone ‘ready to endure pain and danger’.
I don’t agree with what he said, but I know one thing for certain – there are many Americans who do.
SUNDAY, 4 MARCH 2012
Skyped Bertie this morning, and he was wearing a bandana and listening to Eminem.
He’s eleven.
MONDAY, 5 MARCH 2012
Kirk Cameron has now been trending on Twitter for nearly three days.
Something even his death wouldn’t have achieved.
By fortuitous coincidence, my guest tonight was Michele Bachmann – recent presidential candidate, and infamous in American politics for espousing some of the most anti-gay statements ever heard. (Example: ‘Being gay is a very sad life. It’s part of Satan. If you’re gay, it’s a lifestyle of personal bondage, despair, and enslavement – and therefore so dangerous.’)
But, bizarrely, when I asked her for her reaction to Cameron’s comments, she replied: ‘I’m not here to be anyone’s judge.’
I laughed. ‘Well, you’ve been pretty judgemental in the past.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Me? Hardly, hardly, hardly.’
I laughed louder. ‘Probably one of the most judgemental people in American politics! Come on.’
‘Well, that’s rude!’ she retorted. ‘That’s absolutely rude. I’m not a judgmental person.’
I then read her the Satan quote above to jog her memory. But she still persisted in her preposterous ‘I’m not judgmental’ line of defence.
After the show, I asked her why she’d been so reticent to say anything about Cameron, and she revealed that since she ran for president she and her family had been subjected to a year of death threats and horrific abuse over her anti-gay statements.
‘It’s been outrageous,’ she said.
‘Yes, and inexcusable,’ I replied. ‘But are you surprised people would be angry about what you said about the gay community?’
‘They should respect my views, which are based on my faith.’
‘But why, when you don’t respect theirs?’
And that is the crux of the debate.
With the extraordinary pace of change on gay rights, both in America and Britain, there is bound to be this period of confusion, acrimony and mutual disrespect. But in the end, tolerance will win the day. It has to, and it should.
Hating gays, like hating people with black skin, is bigotry, plain and simple.
A politician or church leader who used phrases like ‘unnatural, detrimental and destructive to society’ about a black man or woman would instantly lose their job and be rightly reviled.
The same rules should apply to those who use inflammatory language about people born gay.
Because, and I hate to break this to the homophobes, gay people really are born, not made.
THURSDAY, 8 MARCH 2012
A new seventeen-minute movie lauding the achievements of Barack Obama as president has been released by his election campaign this week – directed by Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar winner behind Al Gore’s remarkable An Inconvenient Truth documentary.
‘Most documentary makers balance their movies with the negative as well as the positive,’ I told Guggenheim when I interviewed him tonight. ‘What are the negatives in your movie about Barack Obama?’
‘Well, I mean the negative for me was there were too many accomplishments,’ Guggenheim replied. ‘I had seventeen minutes to put them all in there.’
I laughed. ‘Oh, come off it! You can’t say that with a straight face. Come on. The only negative about Barack Obama is there are too many positives?’
He didn’t laugh, replying simply: ‘That was the negative for me.’
‘But where do you find fault in him, personally?’
Guggenheim paused for thought. ‘I don’t, frankly.’
Highly amused by now, I asked how much he’d been paid to make it, and he replied: ‘I took a pay cut.’
I laughed even louder.
‘I’m only surprised you weren’t paying him, by the sound of it, for the sheer honour and joy!’
Not a flick
er of a smile passed his lips.
THURSDAY, 15 MARCH 2012
Hackers have broken into Syrian leader President Bashir Assad’s email account and revealed that he was a fan of America’s Got Talent.
Assad shared a YouTube video with his wife of an AGT magic act audition in which a man gets sawed in half.
I remembered the act well. It was a particularly bloodthirsty illusion.
No wonder Assad liked it.
TUESDAY, 20 MARCH 2012
Kirk Cameron appeared on the Today Show this morning, and accused me of unfairly editing him – which is complete nonsense.
‘I love all people, I hate no one,’ he said. ‘When you take a subject and reduce it to a four-second sound bite, I think that’s inappropriate and insensitive. It certainly didn’t reflect my full heart on the matter.’
What a load of guff!
I responded by tweeting: ‘Kirk Cameron is moaning I stitched him up by releasing a four-second sound bite re his comments on gay marriage. These are the four seconds: “Homosexuality is unnatural, detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many foundations of civilisation.”
‘I’ll let others decide if he was stitched up, or just a bigot.’
Got to admire his chutzpah. He’s probably basking in all the attention he’s been getting this past week after years in the show-business wilderness.
WEDNESDAY, 21 MARCH 2012
For the past few months, I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed on my show by the fact that Apple, now America’s richest and most successful company, continues to give jobs to ten times more people in China than it does in the United States.
I’m a huge Apple fan and a regular customer. But it just seems utterly perverse to me that 8.1 per cent of Americans remain jobless, while America’s number-one innovating firm prefers cheap labour factories in places like Shenzhen to somewhere like Ohio.
Apple’s bosses, of course, argue they have a responsibility to shareholders to make the maximum profit. But I believe the financial hit they’d take by bringing jobs home would be offset by an increase in sales from grateful, patriotic Americans.
Today, I finally found someone who agrees with me.
Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney Page 18