Face it.
Any way you want to cut it, Wichita native Kirstie Alley is still a nice looking lady at 60.
OK, she may have made some career wrong turns over the years since she co-starred in “Runaway” with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons in 1984, or since she was on “Cheers.”
There was that Amish movie with Tim Allen and, OK, several others. Still, she has had an entertaining career and she should be proud of the work she did on this season’s TV dancing show.
She didn’t win, but she hung in there to the last and that is more than many of us who are younger — if not all that MUCH younger — could ever do.
And now she has done something even more redeeming, even more impressive.
She has renounced “reality TV,” which is, as everyone with a brain knows, certainly not “reality.”
She announced she’s turned her back on the phoney drama, the imagined tension, the orchestrated mendacity that Americans continue to lap up and that TV moguls love for its paucity.
While Alley announced that she is “re-inspired” to forge back into her acting career, she also said that, after nabbing the second place spot Tuesday, reality TV isn’t really inspiring for her.
It’s a good move.
It would be a better move if more Americans could get the point and make the same decision, but nevertheless, it’s a good move for the actress.
True, there is nothing wrong with entertainment, within reason.
But it is time, America, to turn off the tube.
Read a book. Watch a classic film. Take a walk. Go to the theater — live or film. Attend church. Join a service organization. Build a model. Learn an instrument.
It is time for America to stop staring at the programming and take responsibility for our own minds, again.
Kirstie Alley certainly has plenty of roles to play in her future. And you can count on one thing — she will NOT prepare for them by staring at the tube.
— Chuck Smith