January 20, 2004

The Weird World Of Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow, the fashionable blond actress who once chopped off her hair to look exactly like ex-boyfriend Brad Pitt and who showed up at the Oscars a few years ago in a transparent Goth-meets-Heidi costume, has some nerve calling anybody “weird.”

Yet, there she was in the pages of Britain’s Glamour magazine last week, declaring that America is “too weird.”

Now, if Gwynnie had been referring to the bizarre spectacles of Michael Jackson gyrating atop his SUV, Britney Spears stumbling down the wedding aisle, and Howard Dean going ape-wild in Iowa, she might have had a point.

But that’s not who she had in mind. Explaining why she’s planning on raising her first child in the United Kingdom instead of the United States—she is four months pregnant and living in London with her new husband, British musician Chris Martin—the actress noted:

"At the moment there's a weird, over-patriotic atmosphere over there, like, 'We're number one and the rest of the world doesn't matter.’”

Pity poor Paltrow. Having grown up in her privileged little bubble of “gypsy of the world” artisans, this delicate thespian must tremble with unbearable fright at the thought of her little one being accidentally exposed to Americans who fly the American flag on their front porches even when it’s not Independence Day.

I can’t imagine the horror Paltrow must experience when the National Anthem is played within earshot or the disgust she must feel when she sees American soldiers in uniform, flashing “number one” signs, as they defend Paltrow’s freedom to trash her country while sipping tea along the Thames.

How positively creepy, Paltrow must have thought to herself while sunning herself on Valentino’s yacht off the coast of Majorca, that there are so many of us in America who actually do believe this is the greatest nation in the world, who wake up each morning grateful that our parents and grandparents left their own native lands to pursue their dreams in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

How utterly scary that there are so many of us unenlightened heathens who actually believe the words of the U.S. Constitution (as opposed to Norman Lear and the ACLU’s talking points).

How absolutely chilling that America is still home to Americans who recite the unabridged version of the Pledge of Allegiance.

How absolutely strange that most of us have never faked a British accent—except, perhaps, when teaching our children about the tyranny of King George III.

"I think Bush is such an embarrassment to America. He doesn't take the rest of the world at all into consideration," Paltrow was quoted by the Scottish Daily Record of Glasgow last year. "It all seems to be for him and his friends to keep getting richer at the expense of a nation, at the expense of the environment. It's like a full-scale assault."

This from an eco-hypocrite who appears in environmental propaganda ads with fellow actress Cameron Diaz touting energy conservation—while driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV paid for with her box-office windfalls from all those gauche Americans who plunk down their hard-earned cash to see her movies.

"I love America and I completely stand behind America," Gwynnie said last spring, before she wed her America-hating rockstar husband, who had declared at an awards show that "We're all going to die when George Bush has his way."

If this is Paltrow’s idea of American patriotism, let’s be glad that she will be teaching it to her child overseas, in the company of so many other celebrity expatriates from Madonna to Johnny Depp.

Good riddance, Hollyweirdos.

And God bless America.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.