Hollywood's Fantasy Life

Hollywood's Fantasy Life - I saw the beginning of "The Siege" with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis yesterday.

The movie begins with footage of the bombing of the Khobar Towers. It recycled the footage of President Clinton's public reaction to the atrocity; "Like all Americans, I am outraged", he said - and it all came back. The reaction I had the first time I saw Clinton saying it; he seemed detached, like the words were coming out of a tape recorder, or better yet a bit gray-haired windup doll.

Of course, the footage was followed by a scene of a CIA operation supposedly capturing a fictional sheik responsible for the bombing.

This says a lot about Hollywood, really; in their fantasy world, Bill Clinton was a decisive leader who had the defense of this nation first on his mind.

Oh, yeah - and in this liberal, anti-conservative story, one of the bad guys is...

...Iraqi.

I guess everyone knew who the bad guys were, back in 1998.

Tony Shalhoub, however, remains one of the best character actors in Hollywood.