Homocon

The Mission Inn is recognized as both a National Historic Landmark and a State of California Historic Landmark, and it's stuffed with antiques and historic artifacts, plus more than 6,000 pieces of art on display throughout the hotel. It's a bit cluttered as far as interior decoration is concerned (understatement of the year), but if you're into historic hotels, this one should be on your list of places to visit.

We're now both in Los Angeles for yet another business meeting (they seem to follow, one after another after another), and the weather is beautiful. Not quite as nice as Seattle at this time of year, but warm, sunny and clear, nonetheless.

Was having lunch while a producer/director/writer was blatantly sucking up to Alicia Witt a few tables down. The conversation went something like this: "You're so beautiful . . . You're more beautiful than Rachel Weisz (Uhm, no she's not -- ed.), you should have gotten that part . . . I rented that movie just because you were in it . . . I immediately wanted you for this role . . . I just love everything that you're in . . . I can't believe the studio gave me an actress like you for my movie" and so on until it completely devolved into a discussion of his research on sexual fetishes and how he enjoys using the information for characters in his projects, like the compulsive masturbator, the foot fetishist and people who have sex in bathtubs with raw meat. Ms. Witt charmingly interjected an, "Oh, interesting!" now and again, while exclaiming how flattered she was after each gushing compliment about her beauty and talent. It was an odd and even somewhat creepy conversation, and I felt like I needed a shower afterward, even though I was just a passive observer.

Hollywood is a strange business.

ADDENDUM:
The Los Angeles Times featured on its front page, of course, a ridiculously biased article in support of Cindy Sheehan and her "Sheehan-anigans" outside President Bush's Crawford Ranch. What struck me the most about the article were these two sentences: "Sheehan, a Vacaville, Calif., resident who opposed the war even before her son's death, was a member of one such group in June 2004. She came away from that meeting dissatisfied and angry."

Yet the public record of Cindy Sheehan's statements after her meeting with President Bush says otherwise -- that she recognized that Bush felt genuine compassion for her loss. But Cindy Sheehan has been unable to deal with the grief of losing her son, and that loss is now being pumped, fed, groomed and stoked up by a cadre of anti-war and uber-lib groups who see in Sheehan their perfect axe to grind against the President, his current administration and the Middle East policy. Michelle Malkin calls them, the "grief pimps," and this is their message a la Cindy Sheehan: "I don't believe his phony excuses for the war," Sheehan states. "I want him to tell me why my son died . . . If he gave the real answer, people in this country would be outraged — if he told people it was to make his buddies rich, that it was about oil."

Grief makes some people do and say very stupid things. When Cindy Sheehan first met with President Bush after the death of her son, this is what she had to say: ""I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis . . . I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."

But now she's saying that he's a liar and it's all about the oil and making his friends rich. The liberal MSM, including the LA Times, is eating it up, goading Sheehan into making outrageous statements and behaving irrationally. The Drudge Report has even published a letter written by members of Sheehan's family in which they express dismay and humiliation at Cindy's behavior: "We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."

"I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan," President Bush stated in response to media questions over her accusations. "She feels strongly about her position, and she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position, and I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so."

And there's Mrs. Sheehan's answer as to why her son died in Iraq. It's a pity that she can't hear it, because in refusing to accept the President's words, she's refusing herself the opportunity to acknowledge the purpose and meaning in her son's death.

UPDATE:
"(Sheehan) does defame (her son's) life and his memory by behaving like a spoiled adolescent on the national stage, by lying, and by actively seeking to humiliate her (and our) Commander-in-Chief. We do her son no honor by pretending that her behavior is anything other than what it is -- a disgraceful exhibition of self-annihilating selfishness which reveals the sickness of the conviction that every loss is total, inconsolable, and license to revert to the infantile fantasy of a universe with ourselves at the center."