All that is certain in life is death, taxes, and leftist celebrities speaking crudely. The latest edition of The Hollywood Reporter has a cover story celebrating British actress Claire Foy, presently playing the wife of Neil Armstrong in the Moon-landing movie First Man. Reporter Anna Peele is walking about D.C. with Foy, who is easily angered by protests around the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Perhaps bystanders are blanking on Foy because they are distracted by the hashtagged signs held up by their fellow citizens ("Kava-NOPE") or the many 18-wheelers parked on the Mall and festooned with banners supporting the president with slogans like "Black Smoke Matters."
"I want to key his truck," Foy says of the pro-pollution rig, then smiles. We're so used to seeing her as the Queen swallowing her anger, it's refreshing to see her get to enjoy it. She spots the phallic Washington Monument across the Mall. "All powerful! D.C. is where the giant penis of America lives … in more ways than one."
Our president is the "giant penis of America." Don't tell him. He'd probably love that. Foy is loaded with angry thoughts on this day:
There is a lone dissenter: a counter-protester holding up an iPhone and a sign that says, "#MeTooFraud." "God bless Trump," he calls out over the crowd. "God bless Kavanaugh."
Foy stares at the man. "I just want to rip it up," she mutters about his poster. Then the 5-foot-3 actress walks up to him and says, in a tone the Queen might use to ask a visiting dignitary what colony he's from, "Why have you got a media badge on?"
"What's that?" the man asks, clearly not a fan of The Crown.[Foy played Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix drama.]
"Why have you got media accreditation?" Foy repeats.
"Because I'm from the media," #MeTooFraud says with the affect of patience, as if explaining Apollo 11's lunar orbit to a child.
"What media?" Foy persists, tilting her head to the 3 o'clock position.
"KGED 1680," he responds, turning his iPhone camera toward her. "It's a [Salem] radio station out in [Fresno] California."
"You're a journalist?" Foy asks, cocking her head over to 9 o'clock.
"I love this country," he says in what might be the most patronizing tone in the history of the patriarchy. "I'm not a journalist. I'm an editorialist. I'm an opinions journalist."
Foy simply cannot believe that anyone would use the word "fraud" to describe Kavanaugh's accusers, even though they came forward and made their accusations with no corroboration whatsoever, and made the most scabrous charges against Kavanaugh, as in teenaged gang-rape parties. Peele didn't bring that up, apparently.
We leave the demonstration and walk toward the Washington Monument, but Foy is still thinking about the callousness of the "editorialist." "How dare you write #MeTooFraud on a placard?" Foy says, her eyes wide with disbelief. "It just breaks my heart, how other human beings just care so little about people. That person must not have any idea of what those women have been through. I have a real problem with people not understanding the effect that they have on other people."
And Foy can't contemplate the possibility that Kavanaugh had just been through an ordeal of false accusations.
Thinking of that large man with his taunting sign and condescending smile, Foy's inner Lisbeth Salander pokes out, just for a second. "That makes me want to violently hurt him," she says, quickly adding, "Which is obviously bad. I can't. Because he's a lot stronger than I am." Plus, she says from our moral high ground atop Capitol Hill, "It would completely undermine my position."
