More integrity-challenged Democrat...
Stars Won't Put Passports
Where Their Mouths Are
Thursday, January 18, 2001
By Christina Nunez
NEW YORK — Reports of Alec Baldwin's departure have been greatly exaggerated.
Lisa O'Connor/Zuma
Actor Alec Baldwin: 'I never said unequivocally that [I] would leave the country if Bush won. Never.'
The actor has had a line of people waiting to serve him crow (or a plane ticket) since he reportedly vowed to leave the country if George W. Bush were elected. But Baldwin was busy as early as September practicing spin control.
You see, his original threat referred to the election of G.W.'s father and "was transposed eight years later to the present election," Baldwin clarified for gossip columnist Jeanette Walls. Unfortunately, wife Kim Basinger — from whom he has since become estranged — updated the comment during a junket in September, saying, "I can very well imagine that Alec makes good on his threat. And then I'd probably have to go too."
That left Baldwin grasping for a straw, any American straw. "I think my exact comment was that if Bush won it would be a good time to leave the United States. I'm not necessarily going to leave the United States — I might go on a long vacation," the State and Main star said in the New York Post.
He explained to the New York Daily News, "When you do those junkets, the studio forces you to do dozens of interviews with people you never heard of... I never said unequivocally that [I] would leave the country if Bush won. Never."
Baldwin may have been the spurious defector with the highest profile, but he certainly wasn't the only one. Robert Altman also had to do his own recant when, like many journalists who called Florida for Bush on Nov. 7, he spoke a little too soon.
While premiering his film Dr. T and the Women at a September film festival in Deauville, France, Altman claimed a Bush victory would be "a catastrophe for the world ... You won't see me for dust. I for one will be leaving the country and living in France."
Altman prefaced this statement with, "I don't think show business personalities should get involved publicly and show their feelings, because that ends up working against them. That's why I stay discreet about these questions in America, but ..."
Oops, that ended up working against him. When American press got wind of his feelings, Altman back-pedaled. "It must have been a slow news day," he told UPI. To the New York Daily News: "Here's what I really said. I said that if Bush gets elected, I'll move to Paris, Texas, because the state will be better off if he's out of it."
No comment from Altman's rep on whether Texas will be gaining a new resident this year.
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, a vociferous Ralph Nader supporter, also claimed he would seek friendlier shores.
"With three Supreme Court positions opening in the next administration, I'm frightened to think of a Republican in office, especially one raised by a father who was in the CIA," Vedder told USA Today. "I'm moving to a different country if little Damien II gets elected."
Vedder is apparently not frightened enough to pull up stakes and seek citizenship elsewhere, at least permanently. His publicist did not know whether he will perhaps cross from Seattle up to Canada in the interim.
Pierre Salinger, ex-Kennedy press secretary and conspiracy-theorist extraordinaire, threatened to get rid of his home in the United States to reside permanently in France — the other France, not Paris, Texas. While the Francophile Salinger already spends most of his time in the City of Light, he told the Washington Post, "I'm going to come back to Washington in January to dispose of my apartment in Georgetown," he said, "but otherwise I'll come back here to live for the rest of my life."
Some other vocally anti-Bush celebrities were lumped in with the expat crowd without ever having threatened to leave. Barbra Streisand did worry that "our whole way of life [was] at stake" in the election, but a spokesman says she never threatened to move and doesn't plan to. Too much work to do here, perhaps: The spokesman says she has been talking to senators about her opposition to John Ashcroft's attorney general nomination.
Martin Sheen called Bush a "white-knuckle drunk," but he has his own U.S. presidency term to serve on NBC's The West Wing. Cher branded G.W. "stupid" and "lazy," actually postponing a trip to Europe to campaign for Gore. Nor did she drop the subject after the election: "Oh God," the singer said last month when asked during an online chat about the election outcome. "Gag me with a Texas flag. I hate it. Are you kidding? It made me cry."
Cher will eventually relocate to Paris, permanently: She purchased a plot in the city's Pere Lachaise cemetery in 1999.
If nothing else, celebrity pontificating brought out the sardonic wit in everyone, perhaps more than the election itself. "Altman's Long Goodbye," "Hollywood Babble On," "Of Ignorance and Arrogance," "Baldwin Gives Voters Reason to Back Bush" and other headlines gleefully pounced on free-speaking stars like so many lawyers on a few hanging chads.
The White House Bulletin cited one investment group that facetiously solicited funds for the HELP-US Fund (Help Eliminate Left-Wing [show business] Personalities [from the] US) to help defray the cost of ushering out disillusioned luminaries.
Newspaper editorials, columnists and letter-writing citizens joined the haranguing. "He is one tough hombre, that Baldwin," wrote the Detroit News' George Cantor, "but I think the republic could survive his departure."
Of Altman, the British Guardian complained: "We should beware of such threats. Remember when Andrew Lloyd Webber threatened to leave England if Labour won? He still hasn't buggered off."
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