Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
The Hill
May 7, 2008
Pg. 1
By Susan Crabtree
The stars of “Saving Private Ryan” have declined to support legislation that parallels their hit film.
Hollywood’s top GIs have spurned Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) effort to help real soldiers who had their benefits cut off after losing family members in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers returned home under the “sole-survivor” policy, which was a storyline in the 1998 Oscar-winning film.
In the movie, a troop of soldiers led by Tom Hanks’s character risks their lives to save the titular Private Ryan (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have all been killed in World War II.
Nunes had a similar situation in his central California district. Former Army Spc. Jason Hubbard lost two brothers, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard and Army Cpl. Nathan Hubbard, in Iraq. As the last of the three brothers, Jason Hubbard opted to leave Iraq and the military under the sole-survivor policy, which allows anyone to exit military service with an honorable discharge when he or she loses one or more immediate family members.
Once Hubbard was back home, however, he ran up against a bureaucratic brick wall. The military cut him off, refusing to provide the customary support for a veteran transitioning to civilian life. The Army denied him any benefits under the GI bill, refused to provide the customary transitional healthcare and ordered him to repay a significant portion of his enlistment bonus. Congress has never passed legislation detailing the rights of sole survivors, so Hubbard was at the mercy of Defense Department bureaucrats.
Nunes’s Hubbard Act will provide continued benefits for any member of the armed forces who decides to leave the military after losing a family member. Specifically, it guarantees unemployment compensation, as well as payment for transitional healthcare and commissary and exchange benefits, as well as veterans’ benefits. These benefits would apply even if the soldier had not completed the years of service as agreed upon at enlistment.
In addition, these soldiers would not be forced to repay any portion of their enlistment bonus and may participate in the GI bill’s education benefits.
Since Nunes introduced the proposal in mid-April, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) has signed on as an original co-sponsor and the bill has quickly attracted 295 co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) introduced companion legislation and attached substantial portions of it to the Defense Authorization bill. Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the ranking member, want to see the bill enacted by Memorial Day. Nunes is hearing that Democratic leaders may schedule a floor vote as early as next week.
So far, however, the stars of “Saving Private Ryan,” including Hanks, Damon, director Steven Spielberg and Robert Rodat, the writer, have brushed aside attempts to enlist their support.
An e-mail reply from Hanks’s agent, Meghan Hurlbut, to a Nunes staffer said the mega-star had “politely declined” the request for a signature on a letter of support.
“He sends his regrets and wishes you all the best, but simply cannot become involved in something of this matter at the present time,” Hurlbut wrote. “His schedule and workload just doesn’t permit it, and he will not commit himself to anything that he is not prepared to be fully involved with. Thanks so much for understanding.”
Spielberg had a similar response, conveyed to Nunes’s office through Robert Rozen, a lobbyist for the Directors Guild of America.
“We finally heard back and Spielberg declined to associate himself with this,” Rozen wrote in an e-mail. “I think it was a case of not wanting to focus on this as much as anything; he evidently just finished filming his latest ‘Indiana Jones’ movie and is in the middle of another production and probably just did not have the time to focus; sorry, it sounds like a good project.”
Damon’s agent, Jennifer Allen, said Damon was in Europe shooting a movie but would get back to Nunes’s aides. He never did, they said, while Rodat’s office did not respond at all.
Nunes is deeply disappointed that the celebrities who made the film and benefited from it financially are too busy to sign a letter to help real-world soldiers who have lost siblings in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“Hollywood made millions on this film, and we thought they’d want to give back,” Nunes said. “We have a real-life Private Ryan who could use their help … it has been rather frustrating on our end that they’re not interested.”
Nunes spokesman Andrew House went further and took a swipe at the lucrative entertainment industry’s values.
“We are realists and, in any event, Hollywood is about entertainment; more than $4 billion worth of entertainment last summer.” House wrote in an e-mail. “They must be busy. That’s more money in one summer than what, [the gross domestic product of] half of the members of the United Nations?”
Hollywood’s top lobbyist, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Dan Glickman, may still ride in to save the day. Nunes said Glickman pledged to reach out to the Hollywood community for support after the two met Tuesday to discuss it.
An MPAA spokeswoman confirmed that Glickman had agreed to help enlist Hollywood’s help.
“We just found out about the bill several hours ago and it sounds like a worthy cause,” said the spokeswoman, Angela Martinez. “Dan has certainly said he will try to be helpful as much as possible to reach out to folks with [whom] we have contacts.”
Nunes said he didn’t know whether Spielberg, Hanks and Damon, all well-known donors to Democratic candidates and causes, were reluctant to respond to a Republican lawmaker or to a cause dealing directly with the Iraq war, considering that films on the topic have been box-office disappointments.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose Los Angeles district is home to Spielberg’s DreamWorks, as well as Disney, Warner Bros. and ABC, said he wouldn’t take the brush-off personally.
“Mega-stars like that are dealing with an avalanche of requests,” he said. “They have to be very selective about what to get involved in.”
Schiff argued that responding to Nunes’s request would involve more than signing a piece of paper. More than likely, Hanks, Spielberg and Damon would want to research the issue personally to make sure it didn’t “come back to bite them in some way.”
Rep. David Dreier’s (R-Calif.) district is just east of Los Angeles and he has worked with Hollywood on several of its top legislative priorities.
Dreier said he has never tried to enlist celebrities to back one of his efforts, so he doesn’t know how difficult it would be to convince them. Still, Dreier recalled, the late Charlton Heston never hesitated to get involved when he felt passionately about a political issue, whether it be civil rights or gun rights. Heston marched with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, and more recently served as president of the National Rifle Association.
“[Heston] understood the difference between the theater and the theater of real life,” Dreier said. “If they wanted to make a commitment to the Private Ryan’s story, here is a real-life issue to get involved in.”
May 7, 2008
Pg. 1
By Susan Crabtree
The stars of “Saving Private Ryan” have declined to support legislation that parallels their hit film.
Hollywood’s top GIs have spurned Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) effort to help real soldiers who had their benefits cut off after losing family members in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers returned home under the “sole-survivor” policy, which was a storyline in the 1998 Oscar-winning film.
In the movie, a troop of soldiers led by Tom Hanks’s character risks their lives to save the titular Private Ryan (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have all been killed in World War II.
Nunes had a similar situation in his central California district. Former Army Spc. Jason Hubbard lost two brothers, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard and Army Cpl. Nathan Hubbard, in Iraq. As the last of the three brothers, Jason Hubbard opted to leave Iraq and the military under the sole-survivor policy, which allows anyone to exit military service with an honorable discharge when he or she loses one or more immediate family members.
Once Hubbard was back home, however, he ran up against a bureaucratic brick wall. The military cut him off, refusing to provide the customary support for a veteran transitioning to civilian life. The Army denied him any benefits under the GI bill, refused to provide the customary transitional healthcare and ordered him to repay a significant portion of his enlistment bonus. Congress has never passed legislation detailing the rights of sole survivors, so Hubbard was at the mercy of Defense Department bureaucrats.
Nunes’s Hubbard Act will provide continued benefits for any member of the armed forces who decides to leave the military after losing a family member. Specifically, it guarantees unemployment compensation, as well as payment for transitional healthcare and commissary and exchange benefits, as well as veterans’ benefits. These benefits would apply even if the soldier had not completed the years of service as agreed upon at enlistment.
In addition, these soldiers would not be forced to repay any portion of their enlistment bonus and may participate in the GI bill’s education benefits.
Since Nunes introduced the proposal in mid-April, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) has signed on as an original co-sponsor and the bill has quickly attracted 295 co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) introduced companion legislation and attached substantial portions of it to the Defense Authorization bill. Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the ranking member, want to see the bill enacted by Memorial Day. Nunes is hearing that Democratic leaders may schedule a floor vote as early as next week.
So far, however, the stars of “Saving Private Ryan,” including Hanks, Damon, director Steven Spielberg and Robert Rodat, the writer, have brushed aside attempts to enlist their support.
An e-mail reply from Hanks’s agent, Meghan Hurlbut, to a Nunes staffer said the mega-star had “politely declined” the request for a signature on a letter of support.
“He sends his regrets and wishes you all the best, but simply cannot become involved in something of this matter at the present time,” Hurlbut wrote. “His schedule and workload just doesn’t permit it, and he will not commit himself to anything that he is not prepared to be fully involved with. Thanks so much for understanding.”
Spielberg had a similar response, conveyed to Nunes’s office through Robert Rozen, a lobbyist for the Directors Guild of America.
“We finally heard back and Spielberg declined to associate himself with this,” Rozen wrote in an e-mail. “I think it was a case of not wanting to focus on this as much as anything; he evidently just finished filming his latest ‘Indiana Jones’ movie and is in the middle of another production and probably just did not have the time to focus; sorry, it sounds like a good project.”
Damon’s agent, Jennifer Allen, said Damon was in Europe shooting a movie but would get back to Nunes’s aides. He never did, they said, while Rodat’s office did not respond at all.
Nunes is deeply disappointed that the celebrities who made the film and benefited from it financially are too busy to sign a letter to help real-world soldiers who have lost siblings in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“Hollywood made millions on this film, and we thought they’d want to give back,” Nunes said. “We have a real-life Private Ryan who could use their help … it has been rather frustrating on our end that they’re not interested.”
Nunes spokesman Andrew House went further and took a swipe at the lucrative entertainment industry’s values.
“We are realists and, in any event, Hollywood is about entertainment; more than $4 billion worth of entertainment last summer.” House wrote in an e-mail. “They must be busy. That’s more money in one summer than what, [the gross domestic product of] half of the members of the United Nations?”
Hollywood’s top lobbyist, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Dan Glickman, may still ride in to save the day. Nunes said Glickman pledged to reach out to the Hollywood community for support after the two met Tuesday to discuss it.
An MPAA spokeswoman confirmed that Glickman had agreed to help enlist Hollywood’s help.
“We just found out about the bill several hours ago and it sounds like a worthy cause,” said the spokeswoman, Angela Martinez. “Dan has certainly said he will try to be helpful as much as possible to reach out to folks with [whom] we have contacts.”
Nunes said he didn’t know whether Spielberg, Hanks and Damon, all well-known donors to Democratic candidates and causes, were reluctant to respond to a Republican lawmaker or to a cause dealing directly with the Iraq war, considering that films on the topic have been box-office disappointments.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose Los Angeles district is home to Spielberg’s DreamWorks, as well as Disney, Warner Bros. and ABC, said he wouldn’t take the brush-off personally.
“Mega-stars like that are dealing with an avalanche of requests,” he said. “They have to be very selective about what to get involved in.”
Schiff argued that responding to Nunes’s request would involve more than signing a piece of paper. More than likely, Hanks, Spielberg and Damon would want to research the issue personally to make sure it didn’t “come back to bite them in some way.”
Rep. David Dreier’s (R-Calif.) district is just east of Los Angeles and he has worked with Hollywood on several of its top legislative priorities.
Dreier said he has never tried to enlist celebrities to back one of his efforts, so he doesn’t know how difficult it would be to convince them. Still, Dreier recalled, the late Charlton Heston never hesitated to get involved when he felt passionately about a political issue, whether it be civil rights or gun rights. Heston marched with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, and more recently served as president of the National Rifle Association.
“[Heston] understood the difference between the theater and the theater of real life,” Dreier said. “If they wanted to make a commitment to the Private Ryan’s story, here is a real-life issue to get involved in.”