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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
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Friday, September 5, 2003
19:08 - Dumb puppy, or soundbite salad?
http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/004023.php#comments

(top) link
According to Tim Blair, some of his commenters, and a USA Weekend article, Johnny Depp's "dumb, dangerous puppy" comments were taken wildly out of context and/or completely reworded. Or he gave two totally different interviews. I'm not sure which.

Instead he fell in love, first with Paradis and then with his adopted country. He says he is shocked by the gun violence in American schools and feels it is far safer raising a family in France.

"I was very lucky that something steered me to France back in '98," he says of his decision to make a movie with Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski in 1998. "I love America -- I love going back, seeing my family and friends -- but it's wonderful to get back to France and be living in a tiny village with nothing around. There is still the possibility to live a simple life. You can go to the market, walk about, buy fruits and vegetables -- the things they did 100 and 200 years ago. We have moments when we're sitting in our house and our kids are playing, and we look at one another and think, 'Thank God we escaped.' "

A product of the rural South who spent many years in Hollywood, Depp never really felt at home until he moved to France. He rejects the view that there has been a surge of anti-Americanism there because of opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and he believes the French people have behaved in a dignified manner while some Americans have resorted to "schoolyard tactics" by renaming French fries "freedom fries."

"That was so revealing, that grown men sat around and came up with that idea," he says of the freedom fries initiative. "It was tragic and embarrassing. At the same time, I was happy it was exposed, and people knew that a bunch of congressmen -- big people, the upper-drawer people -- made that decision."

He also was not convinced by the Bush administration's rationale for the war. He says the real reason was America's economic interests. "I saw these American kids being shipped off to war, and I was looking at their faces and thinking, 'They're not ready for it,' " he says. "Is anybody ever ready for it? You're thinking about where they're going, what they're getting into. What's it really all about? It's about dough; it's about money. That's ugly."

So he wasn't deliberately lying, then; he's just on the clueless side. He prefers walking to market with a basket on his head, and that's fine. He thinks the war in Iraq was all about money, which is a new and interesting angle, well-thought-out and bound to upset many political theorists' theses. "Freedom fries" were cooked up by Congress, apparently. That's not the way I remember it, but hey.

If this is the extent to which his commentary reached, it definitely falls more into the "par for the course" category than the "Ha-haah, Orlando Bloom and I shall conquer every 14-year-old female American's heart, and then turn them all against their leaders in a mad cackling swarm of furies in baggy pants and glowsticks!" category.

That's good. It would have sucked never seeing Fear & Loathing again.


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© Brian Tiemann