A joke World Eater made in this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=231533 reminded me of all the celebrities who swore that they’d leave the US if Bush was elected. People like Eddie Vedder, Robert Altman, Kim Basinger & Alec Baldwin, Pierre Salinger etc
Did any of them actually do so? If not, should we expect a slew of similiarly empty threats this next election year?Most importantly, why make such a threat in public if there’s no intention to follow up on it?
Did any of the celeb liberals who swore they’d leave the US if Bush won actually make any such declaration??
Baldwin has long since been debunked. (It turned out to be a misquote of a paraphrase of a suggestion that his wife made in an interview.)
All the others who are supposed to have made that claim have similar pedigrees to their statements (i.e., people who did not like them exaggerating–or inventing–statements they made (or did not make).
So, who really said they would leave. (Original citations, only, please.)
I vaguely recall a similar bunch of conservative types claiming they’d leave the UK if Labour won the 1997 election (OTTOMH, Paul Daniels said something to that effect). Nobody ever goes, no matter what side of the political spectrum they’re on. It’s just hyperbole.
By orginal I hope you mean news cites, since I don’t think I can find any video tapes for you… I know many later claimed to have been “misquoted” but that doesn’t mean they actually were, does it? Backpedaling is a nonpartisan art that anyone can excell at if they try hard.
Robert Altman “If George Bush is elected president, I’m leaving for France,” http://www.turkishdailynews.com/old_editions/09_07_00/for3.htm
I’ll have to work on finding the direct quotes for the others but Snopes has an interesting article on the subject meanwhile. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/leave.htm
According to the Snopes link above, Baldwin didn’t say it, Altman said it, and didn’t move, and Salinger did what he said he was going to do.
So to answer the OP’s questions:
- Yes.
- n/a
- Because blowhards make empty threats all the time.
But did he say he’d stay there forever?
Well, a vow like this, couldn’t possibly come into force until we see whether Bush gets elected president.
Actually, snopes said that Baldwin denied making such a statement, and then says:
(emphasis altered)
What is the great debate ?
Are those liberal wimpy Hollywood elites unpatriotic and bitterly anti-American, or merely shallow and dishonest? Are they sincerely hateful of thier native land, or engaging in a cynical ploy to undermind the morale of our heroic troops?
I suppose that implied in the OP is this — is the “Hollywood liberal”— mostly “Hollywood?” I’m sure even Barbara Streisand talks to her cook(s) – for the sake of appearances.
Well, it could equally be is swearing to leave the US a great way to self promote ?
But we don’t know. Yet ?
Wait, you mean Hollywood types are all wimpy and liberal now? This changes everything, can California go ahead and do another recall? I mean picture the horror of Ahhhnold’s feminine side(I’m thinking Sprockets “…my name is Susan, und I have just gotten out of prison…”
Addressing the OP, I haven’t heard of any wholesale flight by the beautiful people and people make weak threats which they never intend to backup all the time. shrug
Threatening to move to Canada if the candidate you don’t like wins the Presidency is an ancient and honorable American tradition. Art Buchwald wrote a satirical column (like he’d write any other kind) three decades or so ago about how, every four years, Canadians hear all these comments and ready for a wave of post-election immigration, and are subsequently let down when it doesn’t happen.
Anyone treating anyone else’s failure to act on these threats as some sort of dishonesty needs to get a clue.
Slightly off-topic: in the heady days of April, Mallard Fillmore ran a strip reminding its readers that Janeane Gerofalo promised to apologize to Pres Bush if the Iraqi people welcome US troops as liberators and WMD are found; the intent of the strip being to mock yet another Hollywood liberal who was not willing to follow up on their wild promises.
To the best of my knowledge, Bruce Tinsley hasn’t apologized to Janeane Gerofalo yet, either.
It was my recollection that it was Alec Baldwin who got skewered the worst over this. I’d like to discuss his situation a bit here.
Based on what I’ve seen here, it looks like this whole thing got started in a German magazine that spoke to . . . Kim Basinger. (And there was even some controversy about that–first, he said that she didn’t talk to the magazine, then he said that she did. Which could easily mean that he didn’t know she spoke to the magazine until after he said she didn’t.)
But the magazine didn’t quote Baldwin. Just his (now ex-) wife.
In other words, there is no direct quote coming from Alec Baldwin published anywhere in the world that stated he would move abroad if Bush were elected. Can anyone refute this?
And if not, are there any conservatives who wish to state that they were wrong about him? That want to take this opportunity to say, “Alec, I was wrong about you, I’m sorry, I promise to go rent Miami Blues as a way of making amends to you.”
It’s not that I’m particularly aggrieved on Mr Baldwin’s behalf, it’s that I’m frightened at how easily anything–comments, facts, opinions–can get twisted and distorted by anyone with an agenda and, thanks to the internet, rapidly broadcast to the point where they assume the patina of “truth”.
When this phenomenon takes on a political overtone, it seems to me to be done most often, but by no means exclusively, at the expense of left-leaning figures and institutions. Hell, when Clinton was in power it was virtually a cottage industry. And now we’ve waged and won a war to oust a dictator who was behind the 9/11 attacks . . . only that he wasn’t.
Anyone else exasperated by all of this?
At least for those celebrities who are American citizens, threatening to leave only underscores their eliteness. It’s very difficult for an ordinary American to emigrate to any other First World country, due to the difficulty of getting working papers and finding a job. By threatening to leave the country, the elites are simply reminding us that they have the financial wherewithal to pack up, move to wherever, and buy/lease a house without breaking a sweat.
You rule, elucidator.
And as Squink pointed out: Bush wasn’t elected. Yes, he’s president, we all know that, but the Electoral College was subverted by interference on the part of Katherine Harris, Fox News, the Supreme Court and others (I mean, read the Twelfth Amendment and note the part about states choosing their own electors.) This means Bush wasn’t elected. Had Bush legitimately won Florida’s electoral votes yet lost the popular vote by as much as (or more than) he did, I’d say he was legitimately elected, according to our Constitution, which ought to be amended to allow for direct election of the president, anyway. But anyone who said he or she would leave the country in case anyone got elected in 2000 didn’t need to leave.
And I’m still waiting for Bruce Tinsley to apologize to Janeane Garofalo. A no-talent cartoonist doesn’t go insulting my dream girl like that—especially if no weapons of mass destruction turn up.
The only person who has ever acted on their threat to move if XXX was elected is Phil Collins, who moved to switzerland when Tony Blair got in. I am sure that the tax laws had nothing to do with his decision.
I thought I’d heard that too, but according to a few websites he moved there in 1994 because he married a Swiss woman, several years before Blair got in.