When Time's Belinda Luscombe asked "Ten Questions" of actress Sigourney Weaver, it became clear they were going to discuss liberal activism as well as her Hillary-clone role on USA's Political Animals miniseries.
It started with this: "Which Secretary of State do you think would make the best actor?" Weaver replied: "Probably all of them. I think James Baker is a very interesting character. I'd rather see him as an actor than as Secretary of State." Then they turned to the Vietnam era:
TIME: You were a student at Stanford in 1968 and involved in student politics. Is is true you lived in a tree house?
WEAVER: I did for a time.
TIME: And dressed like –
WEAVER: An elf.
TIME: So how do you feel about that time now?
WEAVER: Napalm was invented at Stanford University, so one of the reasons we were protesting was to make sure that didn’t continue. I think we stopped the university, and we helped stop that war.
While Stanford’s alumni magazine also wrote in 2007 that “Weaver lived for a while in a tree house, and was known for showing up to class wearing an elf costume,” it reported she was not on campus in 1968: “Weaver transferred to Stanford as a sophomore in 1969 with an East Coast prep school education and no firm plan."
In a Huffington Post interview promoting the new USA show, Weaver says she spent the summer of 1968 helping her dad and his friend Nelson Rockefeller in the Republican primary against Nixon: "My father was Governor {Nelson} Rockefeller's campaign manager. I actually worked on Capitol Hill and campaigned for Rocky to get the nomination as opposed to Nixon. That summer in Washington made me feel cynical about the system and that was the 1970s." Er, no, it was 1968.
Time and Weaver also could use a fact-check on napalm -- it was developed at Harvard, not Stanford: "Napalm was developed at Harvard University in 1942-43 by a team of chemists led by chemistry professor Louis F. Fieser."
