When your celebrity crush doesn’t share your political and social values.

When I was a kid, my favorite movies were Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I chalk that up to being an only child. With thanks to my dad for enduring The Care Bears movie, most of the time I was outnumbered.

Jane Russell, co-star to Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, passed away last week and I was instantly saddened. At a young age, I was well aware that I was never going to be a Marilyn, but certainly I could aspire to be a Jane. She was known for playing saucy, smart, forward-thinking ladies with just a hint of alpha flirt (her character in Gentlemen hits on an entire Olympic swim team), and her breasts’ appearance in The Outlaw appalled the Roman Catholic Church so thoroughly, they fought the movie’s release. Yet despite her sex appeal, she was attainable, the Dorothy to Rue McClanahan’s Blanche, if you will.

But I’ve since learned that Jane Russell the woman wasn’t much like the characters she played. My fascination with Jane started in my tender years, well before the likes of Gawker, E! and Perez. Today, we know more than we want to know about our favorite – and least favorite – celebrities, and sometimes choose to admire them more for their off-camera work than for what they do onscreen. We can pick our favorites based on how they align with our own conscious values. We can easily see who supports what charity, who donates and who doesn’t – or who thinks global warming is a conspiracy.

To wit: I am forced to like Pamela Anderson now because of her work with PETA. I still find it a little surprising, this admiration. And while I’ve never even seen Dawson’s Creek (or most of her acclaimed movie roles since then), I love Michelle Williams. First, she’s a fellow short-hair. But more importantly, she recently started a non-profit to provide free yoga – complete with babysitting – to single mothers.

Then there’s Cyndi Lauper. It is without irony and with pride that I say I have seen her in concert three times during this decade. Yes, I still like her music, but I love what she’s about. She started The True Colors Fund, which advocates for homeless Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) youth, and this year is helping to open The True Colors Residence offering permanent housing for LBGT youth in New York.

Then there’s Jane. After a botched abortion before she married, Jane Russell became a vocal opponent of choice. And according to her obituary in the New York Times, she said the following to an Australian newspaper in 2003: “These days I’m a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist.” Bigotry, she added, “just means you don’t have an open mind.”

It’s clear that Jane and I wouldn’t have seen eye to eye.

As a kid, I naively assumed that people I liked on screen agreed with me and that we’d be friends if we met. But it’s also reflective of a world without the internet, a world in which no matter how hopped up on pills she may have been, I never would have seen Marilyn Monroe’s crotch in a limo.

Had I known about Jane Russell’s politics before I met the character Dorothy Shaw, would that have taken something away from the movie that I cherish so much? Maybe knowing more about her beliefs tarnishes a bit of the love, but when I hear her name I will always think of her eyes flashing as she unleashed my favorite line: “Nobody chaperones the chaperone. That’s why I’m so right for this job.” She was feisty to be sure, but I know now that I wouldn’t have liked much of what she had to say outside of a motion picture.

There’s both good and bad that comes with knowing what your favorite celebrities are up to in their personal and political lives. Unlike some who hold that celebrities should just can it (usually applied to celebrities holding views opposite their own), I love that so many people use their fame to speak out about their beliefs. But I do miss my six-year-old’s assumption that after the double wedding at the conclusion of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, my hero Jane Russell and her BFF Marilyn Monroe went home and lived happily ever after.

Image: pinkmoose

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From the Hill…

Our friends at the Heritage Foundation (who think Jack Bauer is a real person) have deployed multiple teams of energy, environment, homeland security and response experts to the Gulf to study the federal response to the oil spill. They have visited the areas hit hardest by the crisis. They’ve spoken with response workers, affected oil crews, fishermen, elected leaders and BP representatives. Their finding? President Obama has turned the spill an oil and water equivalent to making a mountain out of a molehill. And you know what? They’re not far off.

From a recent article issued by the foundation’s Web site:

BP is (very) slowly taking accountability for its creation of this crisis. Tony Hayward was finally dismissed as CEO, and they have promised full financial restitution for direct and indirect victims. On Day 100 of the spill, it’s time the Obama administration followed suit.

And what exactly does the administration have to be held accountable for? An environmental disaster made worse by federal incompetence. An unnecessary drilling moratorium that has pulled the plug on a Gulf economy already on life support. A claims process that was negotiated in secret, leaving few answers to why claims aren’t being processed and transparency is lost. A slow response that wasted clear weather days as hurricane season fast approaches, and a decision-making structure led by politics rather than duty.

Environmentally, the President and his eco-left echo chamber consciously chose to ignore the damage caused by the oil in favor of focusing on future tax increases that would expand government largess. The President’s initial push for cap-and-trade taxes as a response to an oil spill was so disconnected and oblivious that it was quickly brushed off by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Even so, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday cap-and-trade taxes were still possible this year if any energy legislation passes the Senate and the bill goes to conference.

Here are some details that are difficult to ignore: the administration assured us that we would not be paying for BP’s mistake at the gas pump, but the recent Reid-Boxer bill moving through the Senate indicates that increased taxes are inevitable and there will be a “drastic increase” in the price of oil per barrel.

Says Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, “Carol Browner, President Obama’s White House Energy and Climate Czar, recently said she thinks only Big Oil, which would include BP and a few others, should be drilling in the Gulf. With the Reid-Boxer oil spill bill, that’s exactly what will happen. And with this legislation, President Obama’s Gulf energy moratorium will become a permanent moratorium that will destroy thousands of good-paying jobs, restrict America’s ability to produce energy, and make America more dependent on foreign oil.”

BP is claiming a tax deduction worth roughly $9.9 billion. Congressman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) went on record stating this development was “reprehensible.”

This backlash is taking on the kind of viral reach that seems rivaled only by the widespread push for Hope just two years ago, when we as a nation took a look at the current state of things and paved a new path with a presidential candidate named Barack Obama. That kind of credit can never last. Someone has to pay for it when it comes due. It was unrealistic, juvenile and cockeyed to posit that one man – a good, fair and excellent communicator – would be able to Fix Problems Now.

Has President Obama failed us in the Gulf? Not really, but his and First Lady Michelle’s glamorous, nearly placating photo-ops on the beach haven’t helped.

But that doesn’t mean things are going well there, either. On the Louisiana coastline, barriers were delivered but wouldn’t get installed until permits were drafted, agreed upon and issued – that’s a legislative issue that would have benefited from an executive call to action.

The Heritage Foundation would have us believe there’s a superhero who can help in our definite time of need, much the way that progressives did in 2008. Our Hope has warped and exaggerated the candidate Obama’s cure-all promises for actual change. Inspiring, but potentially empty, rhetoric during election season cannot translate into action on the scale that we assumed it would. This isn’t a TV show; there isn’t a quick fix.

But if you’re out there, Jack, we’d really, really appreciate it.

Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment in Christopher Correa’s weekly column, Hill/Street Greens, examining the environmental deeds (and misdeeds) of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street.

Image: John Griffiths

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