Occasionally a piece of journalism emerges that really puts in perspective the hidden challenges and private struggles facing a wildly successful Hollywood movie star. Those of us in the general public often take it for granted that celebrities have fairy-tale lives, and seldom pause to realize that the fact that big stars want for nothing sometimes means they’re susceptible to torment by just about anything. Things most of us might casually brush aside as a minor annoyance often account for a great deal of distress in the life of an insanely popular and fabulously rich Hollywood movie star.
One such Hollywood starlet this week laid bare her struggles with being raised by parents with the wrong politics. As someone who was raised in a working-class, earth-people-inhabited den of cannabis, it never occurred to me that being raised in a Republican household could inflict so much trauma on a person’s life. Haunted by nightmares of Tucker Carlson relentlessly tormenting her, this starlet just can’t bring herself to forgive her parents for her Republican childhood:
“I just worked so hard in the last five years to forgive my dad and my family and try to understand: It’s different. The information they are getting is different. Their life is different. I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry I’m just unleashing, but I can’t f— with people who aren’t political anymore. You live in the United States of America. You have to be political. It’s too dire. Politics are killing people….I don’t want to disparage my family, but I know that a lot of people are in a similar position with their families. How could you raise a daughter from birth and believe that she doesn’t deserve equality? How?”
Somehow, though, against all odds she managed to break free of her Republican programming, and despite her parent’s insistence that she just meet some nice young boy and give them lots of grandchildren, she managed to carve out a career for herself in Hollywood, rising to become one of the most celebrated celebrities and highly paid actors in all of tinsel town. If only her parents had supported her and given her a proper upbringing, perhaps her star could have risen even higher than Leonardo DiCaprio.
Those of us not on the red carpet or the silver screen, who are just trying to put food on our laminate table top, don’t appreciate how important it is to be political. It’s true: politics are killing people. So, by all means, let’s all become more political. It appears to be doing wonders for the mental health of those who have discarded their marbles and jumped headlong into the fray.
If there is something 