Actor Alec Baldwin: 'I never said unequivocally that [I] would leave the country if Bush won. Never.'

Stars Won't Put Passports Where Their Mouths Are Thursday, January 18, 2001 By Christina Nunez

NEW YORK — Reports of Alec Baldwin's departure have been greatly exaggerated.

The actor has had a line of people waiting to serve him crow (or a plane ticket) since he reportedly vowed to leave the country if George W. Bush were elected. But Baldwin was busy as early as September practicing spin control.

You see, his original threat referred to the election of G.W.'s father and "was transposed eight years later to the present election," Baldwin clarified for gossip columnist Jeanette Walls. Unfortunately, wife Kim Basinger — from whom he has since become estranged — updated the comment during a junket in September, saying, "I can very well imagine that Alec makes good on his threat. And then I'd probably have to go too."

That left Baldwin grasping for a straw, any American straw. "I think my exact comment was that if Bush won it would be a good time to leave the United States. I'm not necessarily going to leave the United States — I might go on a long vacation," the State and Main star said in the New York Post.

He explained to the New York Daily News, "When you do those junkets, the studio forces you to do dozens of interviews with people you never heard of... I never said unequivocally that [I] would leave the country if Bush won. Never."

Baldwin may have been the spurious defector with the highest profile, but he certainly wasn't the only one. Robert Altman also had to do his own recant when, like many journalists who called Florida for Bush on Nov. 7, he spoke a little too soon.

While premiering his film Dr. T and the Women at a September film festival in Deauville, France, Altman claimed a Bush victory would be "a catastrophe for the world ... You won't see me for dust. I for one will be leaving the country and living in France."

Altman prefaced this statement with, "I don't think show business personalities should get involved publicly and show their feelings, because that ends up working against them. That's why I stay discreet about these questions in America, but ..."

Oops, that ended up working against him. When American press got wind of his feelings, Altman back-pedaled. "It must have been a slow news day," he told UPI. To the New York Daily News: "Here's what I really said. I said that if Bush gets elected, I'll move to Paris, Texas, because the state will be better off if he's out of it."

No comment from Altman's rep on whether Texas will be gaining a new resident this year.

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, a vociferous Ralph Nader supporter, also claimed he would seek friendlier shores.

"With three Supreme Court positions opening in the next administration, I'm frightened to think of a Republican in office, especially one raised by a father who was in the CIA," Vedder told USA Today. "I'm moving to a different country if little Damien II gets elected."

Vedder is apparently not frightened enough to pull up stakes and seek citizenship elsewhere, at least permanently. His publicist did not know whether he will perhaps cross from Seattle up to Canada in the interim.

Pierre Salinger, ex-Kennedy press secretary and conspiracy-theorist extraordinaire, threatened to get rid of his home in the United States to reside permanently in France — the other France, not Paris, Texas. While the Francophile Salinger already spends most of his time in the City of Light, he told the Washington Post, "I'm going to come back to Washington in January to dispose of my apartment in Georgetown," he said, "but otherwise I'll come back here to live for the rest of my life."

Some other vocally anti-Bush celebrities were lumped in with the expat crowd without ever having threatened to leave. Barbra Streisand did worry that "our whole way of life [was] at stake" in the election, but a spokesman says she never threatened to move and doesn't plan to. Too much work to do here, perhaps: The spokesman says she has been talking to senators about her opposition to John Ashcroft's attorney general nomination.

Martin Sheen called Bush a "white-knuckle drunk," but he has his own U.S. presidency term to serve on NBC's The West Wing. Cher branded G.W. "stupid" and "lazy," actually postponing a trip to Europe to campaign for Gore. Nor did she drop the subject after the election: "Oh God," the singer said last month when asked during an online chat about the election outcome. "Gag me with a Texas flag. I hate it. Are you kidding? It made me cry."

Cher will eventually relocate to Paris, permanently: She purchased a plot in the city's Pere Lachaise cemetery in 1999.

If nothing else, celebrity pontificating brought out the sardonic wit in everyone, perhaps more than the election itself. "Altman's Long Goodbye," "Hollywood Babble On," "Of Ignorance and Arrogance," "Baldwin Gives Voters Reason to Back Bush" and other headlines gleefully pounced on free-speaking stars like so many lawyers on a few hanging chads.

The White House Bulletin cited one investment group that facetiously solicited funds for the HELP-US Fund (Help Eliminate Left-Wing [show business] Personalities [from the] US) to help defray the cost of ushering out disillusioned luminaries.

Newspaper editorials, columnists and letter-writing citizens joined the haranguing. "He is one tough hombre, that Baldwin," wrote the Detroit News' George Cantor, "but I think the republic could survive his departure."

Of Altman, the British Guardian complained: "We should beware of such threats. Remember when Andrew Lloyd Webber threatened to leave England if Labour won? He still hasn't buggered off."

Oh, PLEASE ALEC, STAY!

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), January 23, 2001

Answers

Dubya was not elected. He was appointed by the Supreme Court.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), January 23, 2001.

Right. And if the Supreme Court had decided in favor of Gore, would you be claiming that Gore had been "elected"? If so, this is a flagrantly absurd double standard. If you honestly admit that Gore would have been appointed instead, then what's your problem? Appointment is appointment.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001.

Dang. Would have attended the send-off. Babs is staying too I suppose.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), January 23, 2001.

And if the Supreme Court had decided in favor of Gore...

...then the votes in Florida would have been counted, as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. This count was ordered to discover *who received more votes*. If Bush had won enough votes when all the votes were examined under Florida law, he would be the legitimate president today. No question about it. But Florida law was superseded by the Supreme Court.

You seem to *assume* the Supreme Court decision was designed explicitly to choose who became president. This very assumption speaks volumes about your inner belief whether Bush actually had the votes to win Florida.

The fact that Bush was spared by the USSC from having to prove he had the votes is a scandal. Pretending otherwise is to "see no evil". The Supreme Court arrogated the outcome of this election to itself instead of letting the political process run its course. What's worse is they did so in the most cowardly fashion imaginable.

No amount of "let the healing begin" rhetoric can expunge this stain on Bush's presidency. He may be sworn in. He may be "president". But in my view, Bush's "legitimacy" is at best a couple of angstroms thick. Even though we have to accept Bush in the White House, Americans should not be bullied into accepting this outcome as worthy of us - or our country - no matter how much you sneer and look down your nose at us. What is right is right. This outcome was wrong. It always will be.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 23, 2001.

Little Nipper,

You wrote, "But Florida law was superseded by the Supreme Court".

I agree completely. Florida election law was superceded by the Florida Supreme Court.

This sort of judicial shenanigan often goes uncorrected, and probably would have in this instance, as well, were this not a presidential election, where the procedure for setting election law in place is outlined in no less than the U.S. Constitution.

When the Florida Supreme Court took it upon themselves to rewrite Florida election law, the U.S. Supreme Court acted to uphold the law as the Florida legislature had intended it. Cry about it if you wish, but that is how it is.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), January 23, 2001.

What a joke. Bush won the count. Bush won the recount. Bush was ahead after the legislature's deadline for recounts. Bush was STILL ahead after the Florida Supreme Court's "fashioned" deadline for recounts. And still the Gore people wanted to keep counting and counting and counting and...

And the USSC said OK, stop, enough. We have a winner. Live with it.

And we find that the poor losers continue to insist that if we had only counted enough times, by enough different rules, that somehow Gore would have found enough votes to win in ONE of those counts, which then would have been the "real" intent of the voters!

And they actually seem to believe that anything else doesn't count!

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001.

Flint, I see the implant worked! Do you need to take many drugs to keep your body from rejecting it?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), January 23, 2001.

Nationwide popular vote? Flint? Doesn't that provide a mandate for careful recounts in Florida? Are you going to be pragmatic or idealistic in your response, pick one, because your end of the argument seems to suggest that those two approaches are mutually exclusive.

Bush won the "election", as it has been redefined in 2000.

He may very well reward the conservative faction on the USSC with one or more like-minded appointments in his next four years.

In 2025, If you ask Cheney (I don't know if Bush will ever figure it out) what the deciding factor was in the 2000 election, he will say "the absolute genius of the Ralph Nader voters, the core of which didn't just shoot themselves in the foot, they shot themselves in the crotch."

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 23, 2001.

Bemused:

I see no reason to change the position I've taken all along -- that the Florida vote was far closer than our voting technology was capable of measuring. Even the most accurate voting methods are only accurate to about .1%, and the Florida margin was .005%. In other words, talk of an "accurate count" in Florida is statistically senseless. Statistically, we had a flatfooted tie.

But that doesn't make it meaningless. Instead, as usual with politics, "accuracy" became a code word for "Gore hasn't won yet, so let's count again." Now, this is an effective tactic, since (1) Gore's voters will willingly suspend disbelief and swallow it; and (2) If they can get away with it, the probability of "winning" any given recount is 50-50 for either candidate. This is because the data necessary to be more precise than we were simply *do not exist*!

So the democratic spin machine worked over time (and IMO very effectively) to create the impression that Gore would have "won" IF ONLY we counted "accurately". And that anyone not willing to keep flipping this coin until the outcome was reversed was somehow "against accuracy" and "admitting the election was stolen"!

Of course, had any of the counts actually reversed the outcome (for example, the automatic recount), the democratic spin machine would have been satisfied RIGHT THERE that we'd been "accurate". And this is a joke, because it's such a transparently self-serving double standard. But as the old proverb goes, when two monkeys want the same banana, in the end one gets the banana and the other hollers morality. And this is what we are now seeing.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001.

Flint, this is what I was getting at with the "pragmatism vs. idealism" jab -

You're engaging in sophistry.

Play devil's advocate with *yourself* for just a couple minutes. What if events were reversed?

I can tell you that, from my position, if events were reversed, I'd be too embarrassed to try to defend a democratic "win".

It's almost as if you were right so long with Y2K (and I was always in agreement with you on that - I work in the "industry") that you can't admit holes in your position on this now.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 23, 2001.

Bemused:

Of course, I don't see what you see. Had the situation been reversed and Gore the winner of the count and recount, I'd have been perfectly happy to have Gore win it. Indeed, when he was first declared winner of Florida, I thought he had won it. I didn't find this upsetting at all, since both candidates are centrists. They don't disagree so much on *what* should be done as they do on how soon or how much, and these differences get whittled to the same point anyway by the time Congress has chewed on them a while. I fully agreed with Ken Decker that it takes a very sharp knife to separate the two candidates.

And certainly there are planks in the Democratic platform I prefer to the Republican version. Picking which candidate to vote for was not a foregone conclusion for me, it was a balancing act.

So when I stop playing devils advocate, I must admit both candidates fell within my zone of indifference. However, I feel the mechanics of the election and aftermath have been spun beyond all recognition, so I've been trying to provide a different perspective. I must also admit that the fanaticism of many of the posters here, the abject unwillingness to see that there might be more than one legitimate viewpoint, has largely hardened my viewpoint into contempt. You will notice a lot of people are upset with me, and EVERY ONE is absolutely convinced Bush stole the election and open to NOTHING ELSE. This is hardly a coincidence, you know?

What I wrote is quite accurate. It is not sophistry. You should take your own medicine, and try starting with "I'm Bemused, and I cannot accept that Gore lost." Until you do, I can't discuss what we've seen and what it all might mean. Certainly it is all open to multiple interpretations, but this must be admitted before discussion can ensue.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001.

Flint,

Gore lost. With the sticks we are given to measure, he lost.

The sticks don't just have length - they have an alarm clock attached to them. An arbitrary alarm clock, one that can be set by the USSC.

I want to hear you say your proud of your country for this... Result.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 23, 2001.

Bemused:

No, I'm not proud of the way this was handled. It could hardly have been worse. I do think, however, that our voting apparatus is so lousy that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. In this election, what happened in Florida (with the ballots) would have been replicated in any state. They all have similar problems.

Nonetheless, every known voting method has a limit to its accuracy, which can be exceeded. I sincerely believe we could have carefully counted those ballots *forever* and not known the "real" winner, and I believe those now recounting those ballots are likely to come up with different "winners" depending on definitions. Clearly, we must create better methods of handling statistical ties.

And just as clearly, the courts are NOT the way to do this. As soon as the courts accepted the recount petitions in a race this indeterminable (based on the ballots), we were on the road to having one court or another appoint the president. At that point, it was only a matter of which court did the appointing. And there is NO SUCH THING as a disinterested court in a presidential election.

After all this, and after some thought, I think perhaps the best way to handle this is a constitutional amendment to the effect that statistical ties shall be resolved by the state legislature, and the courts shall STAY OUT of this political issue. A tie election is a political question, to be decided by elected representatives of political parties, and NOT by the courts.

As it was, the outcome was guaranteed to be unacceptable to whichever side lost.

As a footnote, I consider the Florida requirement of an automatic recount if the election is close to be highly questionable. A close election is the LAST one you want recounted; you're asking for trouble. Recounts should require demonstration of clear fraud or other error, and NOT just happen because it was close or because the local judges are members of the losing party.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001.

Flint,

I was one of the first ones on this forum to point out that it was a statistical tie in FL - I fully understand statistics, believe me. I know a lot of others took that to mean that I was the enemy - whether or not they were dems or repubs - that I should take a side, and that it was somehow not a "tie".

Well, I did take a side - the same side I voted on, in the end - dem. That doesn't mean I can ignore stats.

Flint, Decker - a statistical tie, especially in this case, how it worked out, means that you should count even more carefully the votes cast by AMERICANS. I know that if you are from Texas or most southern states (like Flint), the definition of AMERICANS is still up in the air. Shame on you, it is not. Because some of these folks were black, or Jewish, or Cuban, doesn't mean that they weren't AMERICAN. In fact, most of them probably would agree with you on your little religeous plans, given the opportunity. But you really don't want to give them that - way too much chance that you'll lose ground if you give your main power-point to those you're trying to keep down by using it. And I guess you're probably right.

So what happens in the next couple years? Do you know (I'm speaking to the Rush Limbaugh crowd here) that you're outnumbered? That we think of you, increasingly, the same way we think of WWF participants, as entertainers mostly and non-people, as... "Fun" guys and gals, nothing more?

You can't win your country being buffoons. Do you have anything to offer besides that?

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 23, 2001.

Flint:

"A close election is the LAST one you want recounted; you're asking for trouble. ..."

I just don't know what to say about that, except I think you're wrong to be so afraid.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 23, 2001.

Bemused:

I don't understand what you are saying, though I'm willing to try, honest. You seem to be saying that more effort should be expended attempting to divine intent out of ambiguous ballots *provided* those ballots were cast by certain definable ethnic groups.

Now, if this is what you are saying, I admit I find it frustrating. I get tired of repeating that the information is NOT THERE, and being met by the claim that we should look even harder for what isn't there.

Now, I see two ways to interpret this. The first is a refusal to believe that we really and truly lack the information we lack. That if only we wish *hard* enough, that missing data will somehow materialize and we can count it. The second is that, OK, maybe we can't tell intent from the ballots themselves, but we we know from other sources like polls that these groups vote 90+% democratic, that most of these people must have therefore *intended* to vote for Gore, so in the interests of "accuracy" let's count these as Gore votes on principle.

(Incidentally, Doonesbury has been playing with this lately. Even though Trudeau is a liberal, he's been portraying the press members doing these recounts as radical leftists "deriving" Gore votes out of every ballot they handle, ambiguous or not.)

And at this point, you go on to say that you "know" that anyone from the South doesn't know what an American is! Gee, doesn't this make you guilty of the same sin you are projecting onto others? I completely fail to understand the purpose of this diatribe. You ought to know by now that I have no use for religion whatsoever, and consider it a sign of a deranged mind. Nor am I (or Decker) from the South. I don't know where you're going with this. Have you decided to ignore the points others make on the grounds that you guess (incorrectly, as it turns out) where they might be from, and then assign universal characteristics to everyone from those locations?

This is mind boggling. It's like I posted that I decided you were from Iowa, and although I've never been there or met anyone from there, I have decided everyone from Iowa is a jerk. Since you are from Iowa, you must also be a jerk. And therefore I can abandon all logic while I ignore your points. How very strange.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 24, 2001.