Diane Keaton Butts Heads With Kennedys

THE LEFT COAST REPORT
A Political Look at Hollywood

It isn't often that a left-leaning actress finds herself at odds with America's would-be royals.

But it's true. Diane Keaton is in a heated battle with the Kennedy family.

She is the director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a group trying to save an L.A. landmark, the Ambassador Hotel.

Keaton and friends want to restore the legendary Ambassador nightspot, The Cocoanut Grove, one of the joints where Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby crooned. They also want to renovate study where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby."

The Los Angeles School District owns the property. The Kennedys are lobbying for city officials to bulldoze the hotel because it's where in 1968 Robert Kennedy was murdered.

Keaton believes that the people in Los Angeles are "guilty of wiping out our history. The Ambassador Hotel is the history of Los Angeles ... We have to fight for this."

The Left Coast Report recommends that Keaton refuse any rides from the second most liberal U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Homie-less Eminem

The maverick rapper isn't so independent after all.

Jumping firmly on the Bush-bash bandwagon, Eminem slammed the prez in a new song and an interview with Rolling Stone.

Eminem's upcoming album contains a tune entitled "Mosh," which hurls invectives at Dubya.

In the song, Eminem sneers, "Let the President answer on higher anarchy/Strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war/Let him impress daddy that way...." Then he uses that highly original hip-hop phrase: "No more blood for oil."

The rapper tells the Rolling Stone that Bush "could run our country into the ground. He jumped the gun, and he f***ed up so bad he doesn't know what to do right now. He's in a tailspin, running around like a dog chasing its tail."

Eminem admits: "This is the first year I've registered to vote. And I'm gonna vote." Then he adds that "Bush is definitely not my homie, but I'm still undecided."

The Left Coast Report says if John Kerry's campaign couldn't convince this guy to move from the ranks of the undecided it must really be in trouble.

Ben Affleck's Movie Mugging

In these post-Bennifer times, Ben Affleck might have to consider moving up his plans to run for office.

Critics have christened his new flick, "Surviving Christmas," a Yuletide "Gigli."

More significant, though, is the public's reaction, which relegated the film's opening gross to a seventh-place $4.5 million showing.

Lou Lumenick of the New York Post wrote a scathing review called "Yule be sorry if you see this." He warned, "If Hans Blix is still searching for bombs, he should check out 'Surviving Christmas,' a crass, shrill and laughless disaster of a holiday comedy with a desperately mugging Ben Affleck that should be banned under the Geneva Convention." Yeeouch!

Lumenick floated the idea that the flick might be "the final career-killer for the long-coasting Affleck."

The holiday horror was panned by 93 percent of the critics on RottenTomatoes.com, and we've never heard of the three outfits that liked it. "Team America," in contrast, won plaudits from 77 percent of reviewers, and "Friday Night Lights" bagged 81 percent.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote that Affleck's turkey "suggests a movie slapped together after the consumption of far too many gallons of spiked eggnog."

Glenn Whipp of the L.A. Daily News said, "With a movie this bad, you can be sure the DVD will be out before Christmas, just in time to give to someone that you really, really don't like."

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson held back little when he declared, "This latest movie is absolutely awesome in its relentless mediocrity."

And the Village Voice's Jessica Winter called the movie a "ghastly comedy" that "emits the subliminal whine of a sucking chest wound."

The Left Coast Report muses, Isn't that the sound routinely heard at DNC headquarters?

Margaret Cho's Cheap Shot at the Pope

Remember how on "Saturday Night Live" Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the pope?

Well, now comedian-activist Margaret Cho has one-upped the smooth-headed singer.

After comparing the presidential race to male anatomy, Cho unleashed an attack on Christians.

In an article for In These Times, Cho cites the "busy-body 'Christian' people," who according to the comic, "when they're not preparing for the Rapture -- are trying to make gay people miserable."

She then started to pummel the pope. "The Pope recently castigated the media for making gays look normal. Yeah, he's a real good judge of normal. With the gold dress, and the matching gold hat, living up in the Vatican with 500 men, surrounded by the finest antiques in the world. You go, girl!"

The Left Coast Report thinks maybe Cho is confused and thinks there's an opening for papal jester.

Guardian of Hate

The U.K. Guardian must be getting its memos from Mark Halperin.

First, the pro-Kerry paper launches a campaign to try to influence Ohio voters.

Now this. Someone named Charlie Booker wrote, in a column the paper yanked from its Web site by Monday: "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all."

As if the anti-God rhetoric weren't bad enough, Booker includes this load of venom: "The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"

The Left Coast Report wonders - Monty Python, Benny Hill, Mr. Bean - where are you now that we need you?

The Left Coast Report is compiled by James Hirsen and the staff of NewsMax. You can read past Left Coast Reports from the archives - Go Here Now.

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