American Idle
Which way to the voting booth?
By Vivid writer: Toby Smith
Can we take Val Kilmer seriously when he says he's considering running to be governor of New Mexico?
Posted: 20/01/2010
You've got to really admire Val Kilmer for his depth of knowledge and his great sensitivity. The man clearly knows of what he speaks.
Not long ago Kilmer told a reporter this about Americans who had fought in the Vietnam War: "Every single person was borderline criminal or poor, and that's why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor wretched kids who got beat up by their dads. Guys who didn't get on the football team and couldn't finagle a scholarship."
You've got to really admire Val Kilmer for his depth of knowledge and his great sensitivity. The man clearly knows of what he speaks.
In another interview, when questioned by a reporter as to why he carried a gun in his vehicle when he drove around New Mexico, Kilmer said, "I live in the homicide capital of the southwest. Eighty per cent of the people in my county are drunk. So driving home on the highway, especially with kids, it's just a precaution."
When stories first began to appear in New Mexico about Val Kilmer and his future in politics, I decided I needed to do some research. I found that he owned a ranch in the northern part of my state. He had acted, I saw, in 'Top Gun' and 'The Doors', both films that I remembered. He had also acted, I discovered, in several dozen other movies. Most of those were films I had not heard of, except for 'Batman.' I know of that movie only because when my youngest son was six years old, he dressed up as Batman on Halloween.
If Val Kilmer was Batman, he should do wonders for my home state.
I think every single state in America ought to have a superhero as its leader. California does, and thanks to their governor, eighty per cent of the people in there are now billionaires.
That Val Kilmer has never held a public office, been in any kind of election and perhaps never voted, does not matter one iota to me. Let me tell you why. When I was nine years old and the teacher in my fourth grade class was a frizzy-haired chain-smoker named Miss Nolan, I ran for class treasurer. What an incredible honour. I captured every single vote in that election. Wait, maybe I only got eighty per cent. Hold it, I think I lost. Anyway, I do know that I tried to get elected, and Val Kilmer deserves to try, too.
I can easily see Tom Cruise serving as Val Kilmer's lieutenant governor, his wing man. It would be so perfect. Those two guys flew fighter planes together in 'Top Gun'. They know how to shoot down Nazis as a team. That Tom Cruise does not live in New Mexico should not be an issue. He will call Val Kilmer 'Rhino' and Val Kilmer will call him 'Skunk' and they will have a good old time together. At least eighty per cent of the time they will drink lots of beer and then take turns ejecting from their fighter planes and landing, just as a precaution, on top of the actress Kelly McGillis, who may or may not be dead.
Val Kilmer is well aware of people's problems, and that is a good attribute to have as a governor. Kilmer learned all about the human condition when he played the rock star Jim Morrison in the movie 'The Doors'. Morrison grew up poor and wretched and he got beat up by his dad all the time. He was drunk when he died. He had just consumed every single bottle of vodka in Paris and had injected six bottles of cough syrup into his ankle. He was nineteen years old. Or maybe he was sixteen. I forget. In any event, eighty per cent of Americans wept for weeks and weeks the night they heard the news that Jim Morrison was gone.
My research told me that Val Kilmer didn't make the football team and finagled a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York City. That's a splendid background for someone to know all about what ails New Mexico. I saw a recent photograph of Kilmer in a magazine and he was standing near a horse. That is good to know, too, for every single person in New Mexico owns a horse. In fact, eighty per cent of the people in my state own a dozen thoroughbred racehorses. Val Kilmer had a cowboy hat on in that photograph, which was also comforting to see. Every single person in New Mexico wears a cowboy hat to bed.
To get another opinion on such a significant topic, I went to my next-door neighbor Bennie who, like every single American, is drunk, poor, wretched and a borderline serial killer.
"What do you think of Val Kilmer?" I asked."Who?" Bennie said.
"You know that actor guy who is talking about running for governor of our state."
"Oh, him," Bennie said. "You know, I didn't much like him in 'Batman'."
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