For a woman who claims to love the “simple life” and who swears she’s happiest when she’s cooking for her kids, lately Gwyneth Paltrow’s face and opinion are everywhere.  It seems as if Ms. Paltrow, aka Mrs. Chris Martin, hasn’t breaded very many chicken fingers for the kids lately, because every time you turn around she is either showcasing her eclectic talents, attending a Barack Obama $35,800-per-plate fundraiser, or sharing her unsolicited philosophy from the left wing of every stage she happens to set her dainty foot upon.

Besides being the wife of a rock star and mother to an Apple and an actual Moses, the woman is a multifaceted entertainer (at least both she and mother Blythe Danner think so). Gwyneth dances, plays guitar, and can both croon country and belt out pop.

After being featured singing on two episodes of Glee, Gwyneth will soon perish in Contagion. Upon request, Paltrow will demonstrate speaking in perfect King’s English, a talent she displayed at the tender age of 20 when she portrayed Viola de Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love.  Right out of the ingénue gate, young Gwynie and her fake British accent won an Academy Award and was promptly crowned the muse of Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein.

As if that wasn’t enough, nouveau Londoner Mrs. Martin chopped and sautéed her way across Italy with famous pony-tailed clog-wearing chef Mario Batali.  The late Bruce Paltrow’s little girl then wrote a Daddy-and-Me cookbook entitled My Father’s Daughter, and did so while hosting a website called Goop.com, where she subjects fans to her thoughts on everything from la fromagerie to post partum depression to how lucky her daughter Apple’s classmate is to have two mommies.

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College drop-out know-it-all, do-it-all Gwyneth Paltrow is the epitome of a spoiled Hollywood brat who was raised in privilege, never told no, and made to believe her every thought was brilliant. The Paltrows must have been the type of liberal parents who handed out trophies to the losing soccer team, because daughter Gwyneth is a hopeless victim of undeserved “Good job-ism” gone wild.

An average kid with moderate talent, since her late teens, between acting, mothering, cooking, and singing, Gwyneth Paltrow has subjected America to incessant rounds of painful “No wait…let me start again,” off-tempo renditions of Für Elise followed by impromptu tap-dancing exhibitions by a grown woman who might as well be dressed in a tight pink tutu.

Gwynie (I like to call her Gwynie) is an attractive woman with a superior gift of imitating British accents.  Ms. Paltrow started her career in Hollywood when her mother, actress Blythe Danner, and her father, the late director Bruce Paltrow, together with family friend Steven Spielberg brokered a deal and got her a starring gig in the movies at 19 years of age.

An unabashed recipient of Hollywood nepotism, after winning an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love Gwyneth was crowned the “Muse” of Miramax studios by film producer Harvey Weinstein.  Since that day, Gwyneth has been nothing short of unbearable.

Raised in Massachusetts, Gwynie moved back to Los Angeles where her career and love life with Brad Pitt took off. Paltrow traveled the world, and now speaks British-style English, French, Spanish, and a little Italian. Gwen even married a temperamental British rock star – Chris Martin of Coldplay – who she’d never have met without the benefit of a VIP backstage pass.

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I’ve been a professional actor for 40 years and, when asked, an open conservative for at least 43 years. Frequently I’m asked to explain why Hollywood is so liberal, a question which I hate because I’m not really qualified to explain the pack mentality or mental illness. My response is always something like, “Ask Spielberg or Oliver Stone why they love that stinking bastard Castro. They’re the ones who can answer your question.”

The second most frequent query is two pronged and relates to a conservative blacklist in Hollywood and what minority status is like on a day to day basis. This I can comment on. I believe Hollywood is now a liberal Bastille. This was not always so, but it is the reality now.  The atmosphere is intimidating and oppressive, but that’s not an official blacklist.  It’s more like viral note taken on wet cocktail napkins secretly passed between smug lib execs describing a young actor as a redneck loving Nazi simply because he said he supported President Bush. It’s a social network where you might have no advocates, but then again you might if you just happened to pull in $35 million over the weekend. I don’t want to borrow a phrase from Don Rumsfeld , but I only know what I know.  I don’t know what I don’t know and well, you know the rest; so I’ll rely only on my actual  experiences during my daily Hollywood business, and encounters of the first kind with two famous and now deceased liberal  Hollywood game players, Bruce Paltrow and Paul Newman. (more…)

March 16 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Broadway opening of “1776.”  Written by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, it went on to run for 1,217 performances.  It’s hard to believe that forty years ago it was still popular to write an unabashedly patriotic musical that openly celebrated American Exceptionalism and painted the founding fathers not just as humans but as the intellectual and moral giants that they were.  Because the 1972 film version is tantamount to a filmed version of the play rather than a Hollywood re-interpretation, its original intent and form is easily accessible to today’s audience.  It deserves a good look and therefore, is this week’s Sunday Matineé.  (more…)