My Oscar for the most inspirational idea of the week goes to the lovely film star Jennifer Lawrence, who, at the tender age of 27, has announced that she plans to take a year off work in order to ‘fix democracy’.
Now, why didn’t I think of that years ago?
For longer than I care to remember, I’ve been growing weary of the daily grind. What could be more congenial than taking a year off from the soul-destroying routine of pacing the station platform every morning and night, listening to announcements of delays and cancellations?
Jennifer Lawrence deserves the Oscar for the most inspirational idea of the week after she announced that she would take a year off from filming to ‘fix democracy’
How blissful it would be to enjoy a break from the trials of producing a daily newspaper — the long days and nights at the office, the hours of boredom spent waiting for something to happen and the sustained bursts of panic when something does.
At the same time, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the health of democracy. I mean, take the Brexit referendum. True, reason won through in the end — but, my God, it was a close run thing.
You have to rub your eyes to reflect that 48.11 per cent of those who voted — that’s 16,141,241 of my fellow Britons (including, I shudder to report, all four of my sons) — registered their preference for being ruled from overseas by an unelected bureaucracy.
Astonishingly, they wanted to remain part of a sclerotic protectionist bloc, with horrendous rates of youth unemployment, whose share of world trade has shrunk every year since we joined in 1973.
Though democracy worked in June 2016, and wiser heads prevailed, we older folk cannot live for ever to carry on protecting the young from their folly. What if they never grow up, and go through life clinging to their belief that an elite class of pen-pushers and superannuated foreign politicians is born to govern, without any say for the governed?
The way our democracy is going, with all these demands for censorship of free expression and a whole generation locking itself away in ‘safe spaces’ where half-baked views can never be challenged, it even seems possible that these poor saps may be duped into installing a Marxist in Downing Street.
Then there’s the worrying new phenomenon of rule by Twitterstorm — the tyranny under which ministers and public servants divert massive resources from vital work to pursuing every politically correct cause espoused by half-witted Hollywood actresses and the anonymous maniacs who spend their lives on social media.
The authorities don’t seem to care how much time and money they waste, in their terror of being thought insufficiently sensitive to the feelings of minorities.
One day they’re spending millions investigating fantasists’ claims of child abuse against long-dead celebrities. The next, they’re installing unisex toilets in schools, on the off-chance that the odd pupil may be confused about his or her sexuality.
Democracy is definitely in a bad way so why not bunk off work for a year and use my free time to fix democracy with Miss Lawrence?
As for today’s fashionable cause, this seems to be protecting women from unwelcome advances — though it beats me how men are supposed to know whether or not an overture is welcome until they’ve tried it.
Heaven knows, we chaps should back off when we’re told to. But we live in an age in which a brush on a young woman’s knee — ‘so fleeting as to be deniable’ — was enough to set off a chain of events that cost a Cabinet minister his job.
I know I’m not the only man or woman who finds that chilling.
The trouble is that while Parliament, the BBC and the quangocracy obsess about such matters, the great mass of the common-sense public hardly get a word in edgeways. We just look on, aghast, and pay the bills.
So, yes, democracy is definitely in a bad way. And I definitely need a break. So why not kill two birds with one stone by bunking off work for a year and using my free time to fix democracy? Simples. Miss Lawrence, you’re a genius.
All right, I can see that one or two obstacles arise — not least, the difficulty of keeping body and soul together when I have no cash coming in. But I reckon I have a solution.
It strikes me as unreasonable that poor J-Law should be expected to fix democracy all on her own.
So what I propose is that I join her in America, where she has multi-million dollar homes in Beverly Hills and New York. With her fortune estimated at £78 million, she should have quite enough to feed us both — and since she is said to have recently split up with her boyfriend, I suspect she could do with my company.
As for Mrs U, she’ll just have fend for herself as best she can while I’m away. It’s only for 12 months, after all — and since I will be doing such important work with J-Law, what wife would fail to understand?
After Miss Lawrence was accused of rudeness at the Baftas, I thought at the time that her remark to Miss Lumley was becomingly modest
Which brings me to Miss Lawrence herself. I confess I’m so out of touch that she hadn’t properly crossed my radar until I saw her on TV at the weekend, presenting one of the Baftas.
I suppose I must have heard her name, but I’m not aware of having seen any of her films (apparently she was brilliant as a shapeshifting mutant in X-Men: First Class). I’ve also reached that age when I tend to get my J-Laws mixed up with my J.Los, BoJos and Brangelinas.
Anyway, my heart went out to her instantly when she, herself, fell victim to a Twitterstorm, accusing her of abominable rudeness to the Bafta ceremony’s hostess Joanna Lumley. In fact, she had merely demurred after Miss Lumley introduced her as ‘the hottest actress on the planet’.
‘Hi, that was a bit much,’ she said. ‘But thank you, Joanna.’
As she was later to explain, she felt it would have been arrogant simply to accept the compliment.
‘It would have been, like: “So you agree? You think you’re really pretty?” ’ I couldn’t sympathise with her more.
Indeed, I thought at the time that her remark to Miss Lumley was becomingly modest — which, let’s face it, is a great deal more than can be said for the black frock she wore in chilly London on Tuesday to promote her latest film.
Ah, yes, that frock. When we’re together by the pool in Beverly Hills, I fear J-Law and I must have a heart to heart about her dress, which left so very little of her anatomy to the imagination.
Presumably, she chose black to signal her support for the #MeToo brigade, who want lascivious men to keep their distance from attractive young women.
Yet while the colour said ‘keep away’, everything else about the frock said: ‘Come hither’. Where’s a chap to turn?
It’s a confusion she seems to share with most of her fellow actresses, many of whom rose to fame and fortune on the strength of their sex-appeal to the ghastly men who run Hollywood.
Today, it seems obligatory for every actor and actress — like every BBC comedian — to sign up to the same off-the-shelf, achingly politically correct opinions. Is no one in the entertainment profession capable of independent thought? Or are they just afraid they won’t get work unless they parrot identical, Lefty views?
Come to that, where did they pick up the idea that acting qualifies them to strike political attitudes or save the world?
Just watch any edition of The Graham Norton Show, with its succession of American millionaire stars plugging their latest movies. With only the very rarest of exceptions such as Kelsey Grammer — who says being a Republican in Hollywood is ‘like having a target on your back’ — none has a good word to say for the American people’s choice of President.
Indeed, it grieves me to read that even the lovely J-Law has said her ambition is to throw a Martini in her President’s face.
Isn’t this grim, holier-than-thou conformity enough to make anyone warm to Donald Trump?
No, I fear that Miss Lawrence and I will never agree about the meaning of democracy or how to fix it.
Perhaps it will be best if she sticks to portraying mutant shapeshifters, while the rest of us return to our daily grind.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
