Stephen Baldwin - rent-a-gob

"Stephen Baldwin would like to step into the ring for a boxing match with US Presidential candidate Barack Obama.The actor is a supporter of Republican nominee John McCain and has told the New York Daily Times that he will leave the country if Obama is elected next month."I'd like to knock some good sense into Barack. I wouldn't hurt him. But if he wins the election, he'll hurt me. He's a cultural terrorist," said Baldwin.Earlier this year, Baldwin attacked rock star Bono for his attempts to ease third world debt.He told WENN that it would make more sense to preach the gospel of Jesus abroad. " from Digital Spy.

What a numpty. If he has been correctly quoted, which is not for sure, is it? If he he has been correctly quoted, then this is the kind of thing which makes my head explode with rage. Everything about it is wrong - it's a sort of moronic soup of fundamentalist Christianity, brawn over brains, borderline racism and greed. Honestly, it makes my head spin. Now the only things I know about Stephen Baldwin are that a) his name is Stephen Baldwin, b) he's obviously a raging halfwit and c) for some reason someone is giving him the oxygen of publicity.

I'm rather assuming that he's an actor and related to that other well-known man of moderate manners, Alec Baldwin, you know, the one who left an answerphone message calling his eleven year-old daughter a pig because of some lapse of phone etiquette. I'm assuming this because they look almost interchangeable.

I have absolutely no idea why actors feel entitled to pontificate about politics to the rest of us, nor why journalists with half a brain feel the need to pass it on. (But then why do I read it and feel as though my head is going to explode?)

This election campaign started off with me, for once, thinking that either of the candidates would be good for the US and the wider world. But then McCain plumped for Ms Palin, a woman who think the epithet 'pitbull in lipstick' is a compliment, and now a long line of simian celebrity supporters have been queuing up to drag their knuckles along the ground to some virtual podium and voice their wholehearted support for the Republican candidate. And he looks more and more bewildered as time goes by. How the Hell did he find himself tangled up in this circus of freaks? He's a moderate man, one who doesn't sling mud or rely on homespun and ghastly faith in some God exclusive to the white and conservative voters of America. (Why is God right-wing in the US and left-wing over here? Discuss. Ed) He's no dummy either, and yet now he looks out of his depth, an apologist for the extremism of his cohorts. It's a weird, weird spectacle.

Obama has stuck to his guns and looks increasingly presidential. He's got his share of nutter support too, but he manages to sidestep it and emerge unsullied. And for that political nous more than for anything else, I think I'd like to see him at the helm of the (so-called) civilised world.

And I'd quite like Stephen Baldwin to get back into his cave and shut the f*** up.