I suppose that the time had to come that I would actually agree with something that came out of the Trump White House. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Actor Johnny Depp was at a film festival in Glastonbury, England and he spoke about Donald Trump. Variety has details:
Depp is at the U.K. music festival as part of its Cineramageddon event. Presenting the first of the three movies he has selected, he asked festival goers: “Can you bring Trump here?” Responding to subsequent jeers, he said: “You misunderstand completely. When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”
Depp then added: “I want to qualify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it has been a while and maybe it is time.”
The BBC first reported the news, and noted that he went on to further qualify his comment, which some read as a reference to the 1865 shooting of Abraham Lincoln by actor John Wilkes Booth.
“By the way, this is going to be in the press and it’ll be horrible,” Depp said. “It’s just a question, I’m not insinuating anything.”
Johnny Depp is either stupid or he’s naive. Or perhaps one of his fourteen houses is actually a cave and he’s been in seclusion therein and didn’t watch any newscasts last week and doesn’t know about the Virginia baseball diamond shooting, nor that Congressman Scalise is still in the hospital. In all events, the White House responded and I have to say that I agree with them on this singular occasion:
“President Trump has condemned violence in all forms and it’s sad that others like Johnny Depp have not followed his lead,” the statement read. “I hope that some of Mr. Depp’s colleagues will speak out against this type of rhetoric as strongly as they would if his comments were directed to a Democrat elected official.”
Johnny Depp owes some apologies and I think that the first one should be to the Democratic party. Depp does not speak for us and he hurt our cause with his reckless and irresponsible banter to his British fans. Even their response was a mixture of cheers and boos. The politicization of celebrity is atrocious; now we’ve got the shoe on the other foot, the celebretization of political tragedy and that is simply not acceptable.