Is the Left going to try to demonize Fred Thompson over a role he played on a television show? This story in the Los Angeles Times suggests the answer is yes (with the LAT leading the charge, of course).
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.
But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem.
"Not only do politicians have to worry about getting comfortable with a crowd and saying something that might be caught on tape," said USC professor Leo Braudy, a pop culture expert, who has written extensively about film. "Now actors who have political aspirations will have to go through every single line of every part they played to make sure there's nothing they need to explain or apologize for."
I fully expect that clips from that show will pop up on YouTube and in leftwingers' grassroots "ads" attacking Thompson. The question isn't if it will happen, but will it have any effect - and how will Thompson handle it.
A clue to how Thompson will handle it might be found in how he answered a media question recently about his "colorful" dating habits as a single man in the U.S. Senate in the 1990s. Thompson's answer was disarming in the way that Ronald Reagan once disarmed his critics:
"I was single for a long time, and, yep, I chased a lot of women," Thompson reportedly said, with a chuckle. "And a lot of women chased me. And those that chased me tended to catch me."
A perfect response, demonstrating the silliness of the attack. I suspect you'll hear a similar approach from Thompson to the Knox Pooley question when, inevitably, it comes.
Meanwhile, Erick at RedState calls the LAT story potentially the "dumbest 'serious news story' ever." Patterico responds as well.
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