Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com VS Bill O’Reilly over blacklisting Jon Voight
Jon Voight intended to turn heads with the “very strong points” in his Washington Times op-ed last week. But he probably didn’t expect so many of them to reside in Hollywood.
In a sign of the growing interest in politics this election year, bloggers who normally focus on the entertainment industry are expanding their presence in one of the Internet’s other spheres of influence.
Voight’s piece slammed Democratic candidate Barack Obama, praised GOP contender John McCain and even repudiated his own Vietnam War protests as the naive flailings of a deluded youth. It was a stunning bit of self-revelatory memoir from the now-conservative “Coming Home” star.
The political blogsosphere, of course, went ballistic. Then Jeffrey Wells, who runs the movie and pop culture site Hollywood-Elsewhere.com, took Voight to task for his right turn and wrote that, if he were a studio executive, he might think twice before hiring Voight for any future film work. “[Voight is] obviously entitled to say and write whatever he wants,” wrote Wells. “But it’s only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn’t pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, ‘Voight? Let him eat cake.’”
Voight seemed particularly taken aback by Wells’ blog postings, which many have interpreted as a call for blacklisting the actor. “It’s out of line to insinuate that we should blacklist people for speaking their minds,” Voight told Politico. “It’s a strange thing when people in this country can’t express their opinions without being attacked.” He added that Hollywood liberals frequently discuss topical issues, and “it’s an important time for people on the conservative side to speak out.”
- from Politico
Here’s Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-elsewhere.com ’s response:
I feel moderately relieved that I wasn’t too bad on The O’Reilly Factor earlier today, and at the same time somewhat depressed that I didn’t really kick out the jams either. I did everything I was told to do — write down what I wanted to say, decide which points were best to emphasize, and concentrate on being clear and concise. But halfway through the interview the clarity I had in my head started to feel mushy and imprecise. I was half making sense and half saying to myself, “What’s happening? Why isn’t this working out better?”