The world is a simple place in the nursery, and it has stayed a simple place for New York Times columnist Frank Rich: Either you're on his side, or you're a Nazi. Charlton Heston, for instance, thinks that gun control is a bad idea. So he's a Nazi. A talented Nazi, maybe -- Rich compares him to Leni Riefenstahl, the propagandist who made for Hitler the visually stunning movie Triumph of the Will -- but still a Nazi. And maybe Heston isn't so talented anyway, Rich adds: Gore Vidal says he was a lousy actor in Ben-Hur, and who should know better about bad actors than Gore Vidal?
Why take out after Heston now? Every year the Kennedy Center in Washington honors a small group of American artists, and the Oscar-winning film star and National Rifle Association official was in this year's crop. Almost without exception, press accounts of the event made some disparaging aside about the actor's politics. But only Frank Rich decided to blame him for the recent school shootings in Kentucky. And only Frank Rich thought to claim that Heston's gorgeous looks in the 1950s carried a subliminal homoerotic message.
Heston deserves congratulations for his latest honor, and as for Rich, well, once upon a time -- and it was a long time ago -- he was a discerning theater critic, capable of subtle appreciations and delicate distinctions. But then he decided to put away childish things and write for the editorial page. And somewhere along the way his critical judgments even about actors narrowed to only two categories: himself and the Nazis. It doesn't really seem quite enough to go through adult life with.