Tis the season for open letters. And quoting proverbs.
On Wednesday morning, a group of Hollywood notables signed a new missive denouncing the use of the word “genocide” with regards to Israel’s military response in Gaza. Shari Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Gary Barber and Debra Messing were among the 5,000-plus signatories who hail from the worlds of entertainment, politics and academia and decried “the latest blood libel to be inflicted on the Jewish people.
For some, including Haim Saban and “Pulp Fiction” producer Lawrence Bender, it was the second open letter they’ve signed in 15 days. They previously lent their names to a Brigade billet-doux that denounced Mark Ruffalo for peddling “antisemitic tropes” in his critique of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Naturally, a rival open letter that defended the Marvel star and was signed by some 180 self-identifying Jews. (We’ve heard complaints that at least one of the 180 signees isn’t actually Jewish.)
Anywho, hours before Wednesday’s open letter hit, Ruffalo — the actor who started combining the words genocide and Israel in 2021, apologized for doing so that same year and then resumed the practice with zeal in 2023 — unleashed again on Paramount, claiming the studio, headed by David Ellison, “cannot be trusted.”
Both Ruffalo and the don’t-call-it-genocide crowd quoted proverbs to make their points. Yikes! “A lie has no legs,’ notes the ancient Hebrew proverb. We will not allow this lie to stand,” the open letter said. “’The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.’ Proverb,” Ruffalo wrote. (It’s unclear where the Ruffalo maxim originated, but it’s definitely not Hebrew. The best we could find is that a samurai, or yoga teacher, said it.)
Ruffalo finished his missive with the line, “They just don’t act in good faith on any level” with a link to everyone’s go-to source on merger developments, something called TechDirt. That story, which ran under the headline “Paramount Caught Using ‘Astroturf’ Group To Drum Up Fake Support For Merger” published on Tuesday.
But upon closer reading, TechDirt was merely aggregating a story published in The Intercept all the way back on Aug. 21 — or about seven open letters ago. (Admittedly, we’ve lost count.) For what it’s worth, The Intercept story, written by Matt Sledge, was explosive in its look at the origins of the shadowy pro-merger group Neighbors for Strong Communities.
We thought it would be helpful to tell our readers that publicist Sheri Goldberg, who reps Henry Winkler and is involved with Neighbors for Strong Communities, is not the same publicist Sheri Goldberg who works at ID PR.
Wednesday’s open letter brings together Hollywood and such former world leaders as Boris Johnson and eyebrow-raising academics like Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who once penned a very embarrassing public letter for Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense on his own interpretation of the wording of a federal law pertaining to the enticement of minors into illegal sex acts via the internet. (Pinker later said he was unaware of the nature of the charges against Epstein.)
As for the Hollywood types — the only ones we care about — those who added their names include Jane Rosenthal, Susan Rovner, Fernando Szew, Ben Silverman, Howard Owens, Kevin Yorn, Sharon Osbourne, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anthony Edwards, Mayim Bialik, Maureen Lipman, Patricia Heaton, Jerry O’Connell, Matthew Weiner, Amy Sherman-Palladino, David Shore, Gary Gilbert, Danny Cohen, Neil Blair, Michael Rotenberg, David Kohan, Nancy Spielberg, Marty Adelstein, Teddy Schwarzman, Bradley Fischer, Howard Rosenman, Alec Sokolow, Rob Kutner, Rebecca De Mornay, Emmanuelle Chriqui and more.
One source who is working behind the scenes on pro-Palestinian messaging in town tells us that the combination of the midterms, the merger and a spicy Oscar season, which could feature both Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, will prompt more and more Hollywood denizens to pick a side.
“The time is coming for people to declare where they are…,” says the source.
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