Perhaps we aren’t supposed to remember. Or, perhaps, we’re no longer supposed to care.
The actor Matthew Broderick is now starring in a series of Honda auto TV commercials. And that could inspire some of us to ask whether Broderick is forced to do so because he’d otherwise starve to death. Or, is there no other product that he can attach his celebrity to for some extra bucks?
In 1987, Broderick, then 25 and already a widely known star from his leading role in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” was vacationing in Northern Ireland, when the rental BMW he was driving veered into the oncoming lane, colliding head-on with a car being driven by a 28-year-old woman who was accompanied by her 63-year-old mother.
Broderick and his passenger had minor injuries. The women in the other car were killed.
Initially, Broderick was charged with the country’s equivalent of vehicular homicide, for which he could have done five years. Later, the charge was reduced to careless driving, for which he paid a $175 fine.
Apparently, his explanation — that he had absolutely no idea and absolutely no recollection of what happened — stood up. The family of the victims called it “a travesty of justice.”
Whether it was a travesty of justice, I don’t know. I rather doubt that you or I could’ve similarly walked away from such an episode with a fine of $87.50 per fatality.
But I do know that of all the things that Broderick could have cashed checks from as a celebrity TV spokesperson, it shouldn’t have been for an automobile.
As a matter of taste, common decency and common sense — and regard for his victims and their survivors — I’d have told Honda, “Thanks, but no thanks.” But that’s showbiz.
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There’s no disagreeing with the Obama White House’s take. Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of the young woman who testified before Congress about the need for birth control coverage as “a slut,” was way out of line. It was, as President Obama called it through his spokesperson, “reprehensible.”
But if the president wants to fight the most steady and systemic sexual objectification and degradation of young women in this country, he might pay a little attention to America’s most popular black male rappers. For the last 15 to 20 years, they’ve grown rich by denigrating young women as “bitches,” “whores” and worse. According to these “artists,” young women exist only to serve the rappers’ immediate sexual desires, and are then discarded.
And these same wildly popular rappers have re-introduced and even mainstreamed the N word.
You know nothing about this, Mr. President?
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Of all the analysis and over-analysis of a world gone nuts, as heard on TV, the best of February’s may have belonged to Kathie Lee Gifford. Seriously.
Matt Lauer, within NBC’s “Today” show, had been seen conducting a one-on-one interview with Lindsay Lohan, during which Lohan vaguely claimed, in vague terms, to be substance free “for a long time.”
Later, in the “Today” session hosted by Gifford and Hoda Kotb, Gifford said she was suspicious of Lohan’s claim because “people in recovery can tell you, to the minute [when they went straight].”
If only TV folks applied such sensible analysis to issues of presidential politics, Islam and Wall Street.
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In February, there seemed to be two sustained, major news stories reported and mined on ABC News, WABC-Ch. 7 News and ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The View.”
1) The Academy Awards would be seen on ABC.
2) The new roster of contestants on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars.”