LA Times Takes a Cheap Shot at Fred Thompson

It's one thing to hold a politician responsible for things they say in speeches and public appearances, but the LA Times wants to set a new standard. They seem to think that actor and former Senator Fred Thompson may have political trouble because of a role he played 19 years ago:

Ronald Reagan became president even though he worked with chimps in B movies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger played a murderous robot, and that didn't keep him from becoming governor.

So can "Law & Order" actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) become the first presidential candidate with this credit? Thompson played a white supremacist, spewing anti-Semitic comments and fondling an autographed copy of "Mein Kampf" on a television drama 19 years ago.

His colleagues say that he was just an actor putting everything he had into playing the role of a charismatic racist, named Knox Pooley, in three episodes of CBS' hit show "Wiseguy" in 1988. "Do you call Tom Cruise a killer because he played one in a movie?" asked show creator and writer Stephen J. Cannell.

You'd think that the major newspaper in Hollywood would understand that actors portray characters that are not necessarily representative of who they are. Just because he plays a racist on TV doesn't mean he is one or has to explain or defend his actions in a political sense.

MSNBC is piling on as I saw a promo just this morning that the Scarborough Country show is going to do a piece on the same Thompson part. I hope the voters are smart enough to tell the difference between an actor in a role and the real-life character of the person (but you never know about the voters).

If this is the best the mainstream media has in its battle to stop Thompson, he'll have a pretty easy time of it.