John Lithgow Trashes Trump, Mum on Cancel Culture, Blacklist 2.0

John Lithgow can do it all.

• Comedy? “3rd Rock from the Sun.”
• Drama? “Footloose”
• Horror? “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”
• John Irving-esque fiction? “The World According to Garp.”

Give credit to the far-Left NPR which effectively summed up Lithgow’s body of work.

John Lithgow seems to have done all the things: theatre, movies, TV. Good guys, bad guys… lots of bad guys. Or just maybe complicated characters, including Winston Churchill in The Crown and a very small king in Shrek. This is an actor who is willing to take a risk, play against type, and elevate the profound and the ridiculous.

Now, the 79-year-old is taking on President Donald Trump for overhauling The Kennedy Center. We don’t know what changes will be made to the D.C.-based institution or whether “new management” will help its financial bottom line.

It’s too soon to tell.

Not for Lithgow, who attacked Trump as a threat to the arts.

“First there was coronavirus, now there’s this,” he added, before claiming that the status of the arts in the U.S. is a “pure disaster” and “really disheartening.”

Fine. Good. That’s his opinion, and who knows the arts better than Lithgow? It still brings up an awkward but necessary question.

Where has Lithgow been over the past few years?

Google “John Lithgow Cancel Culture” and nothing comes up, at least on the first few pages of said search. Why wasn’t Lithgow using his considerable clout to demand artists be able to tell their stories their way?

What about comedians who got punished for telling the wrong jokes? Let’s not forget how many stand-ups self-censored for fear of blowback. Desus and Mero, at the height of their brief fame, admitted to doing just that?

Does Lithgow think they were alone in doing so? Does he care?

The acting veteran is also a published author. Has he weighed in on “sensitivity readers” who have been slicing and dicing the works of Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie? 

“Let me decide what I’m offended by’: Tom Hanks wades into book censorship row as he says he’ll boycott works edited for ‘modern sensitivities’ – after backlash at publishers rewriting Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie novels . pic.twitter.com/b1losAABt7

— Madiha Haneef (@MadihaHaneef1) May 20, 2023

No? What about the attacks on author Jeanine Cummins, whose “crime” was writing a story about a Mexican immigrant without being Mexican herself?

Cummins could have used an ally like Lithgow at the height of her cancellation.

And then there’s the Hollywood Blacklist 2.0. Conservatives are treated shabbily in Hollywood, forcing them to hide their views for fear of professional blowback. That’s been the norm for some time now.

Is the actor unaware of it? Perhaps. Could he be oblivious to all of the above?

Unlikely.

Artists should keep President Trump honest when it comes to artistic expression. The real estate mogul has talked about censoring his artistic critics like “Saturday Night Live,” but he never follows through on it.

It’s all bluster, thank goodness. If that changes, Lithgow could lead the charge against him.

It also would be nice if he similarly spoke out on other issues facing the arts, especially when it doesn’t dovetail with his progressive worldview.

Just ask James Woods or Kevin Sorbo. Those canceled actors would like a word with Lithgow.

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