It was meant to be one of those respectable charity events that Hollywood can sometimes pull off successfully. This event was a private charity dinner for a children’s leukemia foundation. There would be no red carpet, no influencer photo shoots – only tables of those who paid for their tickets and several people who came to speak about the children they were helping.
James Woods was one of those people. He was giving a brief speech – nothing impressive, just a few sentences about those children – when Alyssa Milano realized that it was time for her political expertise.
She got up in the middle of his sentence, interrupted him and addressed everyone in the room, claiming that Woods was “just another dumb MAGA.”
Silence was followed – that awkward silence which people usually look away from. Woods did not even raise his voice. Instead, he just looked at her calmly and smiled like a man who just received an easy target.
“My dear,” he replied, “I’m a Rhodes Scholar, with a doctorate in microbiology and a minor in theater. You’re a washed-up actress with no role in 12 years. But either way, the kids you came here to help have leukemia, not Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The air seemed to go out of the room for a second. Milano’s expression changed dramatically and went from confusion to rage to understanding that there were cameras filming everything. Then she started acting the part of angry celebrity leaving the scene after receiving too much criticism. She picked up her bag, stopped at the donation table, wrote a check and left the room in style.
The check is the giveaway. It was never about the money. It was about the exit. Milano has spent years honing her skill of making a dramatic exit and having her picture taken while generously writing a check. Those kids with cancer were for those 30 seconds just a background scenery for her morality performance.
This is the pattern. Milano’s career has been transformed into one endless audition for Most Concerned Person In The Room. The content of the room is irrelevant. All that matters is that she is correcting it. Woods just declined to follow the script that she prepared for herself. He didn’t engage in a political debate. He didn’t support any of the candidates. He just pointed out to the actual purpose of the event and reminded her in a rather gentle manner that it has nothing to do with her obsession.
The quote about her career will resonate more than anything else that was said during the event, and for all the right reasons. Milano’s last stint as a lead actress happened so long ago that there are many people in the audience who need Google to remember who she is. Activism replaced the lack of acting career. The problem with activism as a career path is that sooner or later such a person ends up with the audience who will never reply. Woods replied.
There is a type of celebrity progressive who treats any public event as an extension of their personal timeline. They expect the approval for their correct opinions and get upset when the applause is not forthcoming. Milano did it so often that now it has become her instinctive behavior. The charity dinner wasn’t about leukemia from the moment when she decided that Woods is the problem of the room. The sick children were only props. The interruption became the main idea. The check became the desperate attempt to recover from the insult.
But Woods did something that this kind of people cannot stand. He remained cool and refused to accept the premise. He didn’t have to create the moral authority ex nihilo. He just pointed out that in this discussion one person came to talk about the dying children while another one was trying to score a political point and left when she was unable to achieve her goal.
No question, Milano will refer to this as yet another example of attacks from the right. That’s the typical script, and Milano is well-versed in it. However, what she is unlikely to admit to herself is that interrupting a talk about children who have cancer with some political comment is anything but brave. Instead, it is the act of a person who thinks that the sounds of their own voice carry some sort of moral significance.
The donation will go through as planned despite all the commotion, but what is important here is the moment that preceded it, the moment when a person who once had a stage at their disposal chose to place the significance of their politics over the reason for the meeting. In this situation, James Woods just said the quiet part out loud.
