Californias State Treasurer Phil Angelides, wants to be Governor of California. He is running against a very disappointing and frequently hypocritical incumbent, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like a lot of citizens who are elected to public office, Mr. Schwarzenegger once worked in another profession. You may have heard of him.
In his new campaign ad, Angelides is bashing that profession by using it as a negative stereotype. Angelides, the ad says, is a leader, not an actor.
A lousy businessman can grow up to be the Decider of the United States, but the notion of an actor winning re-election as Governor of California is portrayed as a ridiculous notion. An actor, says Angelides, is not a real leader. Actors aren't real. They are pretenders. It is based on a misunderstanding of what actors do, and fed on enduring negative stereotypes of actors as dishonest, infantile, and libidinous Dionysiacs who will steal your silverware and your daughter's virtue if you don't bar the door. Love their movies, buy magazines that publish trespassing photos of them and say, "Look at the cellulite on her!!", accost them in airports and make them sign your baggage claim ticket while they're eating, but do not regard them as intelligent and competent citizens with intelligent opinions.
This goes right back to Plato, who would have barred actors and poets from his ideal republic because we are not to be trusted: we pretend to be other people. Instead of seeing the actor as a storyteller and someone who addresses the truth by way of story, language, and visual imagery, the actor is frequently seen as practitioner of a deceitful art, a dissembler, an avoider of truth.
Sadly, the Lotus Sutra also exhibits this judgment, as the Buddha includes actors in his list of dangerous persons that one should avoid on the path to enlightenment.
Angelides is trying to portray Schwarzenegger as a failed leader, so he reached for something easy: the old actor canard. "The Actor can't tell real life from one of his movie roles. Schwarzenegger thinks it's all a movie!" It's an insult that doesn't land on the man alone, but an entire profession, most of whose workers struggle to make a living. The acting profession is so difficult to survive in, I myself wonder how or why any of us do it. It certainly isn't because of the widespread respect for our craft; not in a profession where survival depends on your willingness to sell Doritos on television and/or show your boobs, controlled by a marketplace that actively works against creativity.
It is a tough and unromantic profession, one that faces rollbacks on salaries and benefits like the ones confronting so many other American workers.
And this candidate for Governor is on air suggesting that actors really should not be considered fit for public office. How thoughtless. How mean-spirited. And how basically undemocratic.
If he has something to teach me about being a good leader, I would like to hear it. In the meantime, this retired actor has a couple of things to say to him.