She came to Capitol Hill to do the good celebrity thing and talk up a worthy cause: women's rights.
He came to Capitol Hill to glower, vote against Joe Wilson and deny the existence of global warming.
It's no surprise these two titans of beauty clashed.
]
Nicole Kidman showed up in D.C. to serve as spokeswoman for Unifem, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, during a congressional hearing on worldwide violence against women. She wanted to Human Foreign Relations Subcommittee to commit 1 billion dollars over five years to worldwide anti-violence-against-women efforts.
Huntington Beach's Dana Rohrabacher, though, didn't let her leave without dinging the nobility of her effort a tiny bit. From a column in the Phillipine Daily Inquirer (whatever, it was the first link on Google News):
“These champions need and deserve our support,” Kidman said. The US Government,
she added, could help “not with a box of band aids but with a
comprehensive, well-funded approach that acknowledges that women's
rights are human rights.”
Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher “turned the spotlight back on
Kidman and Hollywood, asking if the film industry had 'played a bad
role' in the way women are treated.”
“Probably” was Kidman's reply, though she quickly added, “I can't be
responsible for all of Hollywood, but I can certainly be responsible
for my own career.”
The entire exchange actually sounds pretty civilized. Kidman took Rohrabacher's implied assertion of hypocrisy and took some responsibility. Obviously, she said, Hollywood has an effect. She could instead have responded by calling Rohrabacher himself a hypocrite: After all, he voted against 13 of the 16 bills supported by the National Organization of Women in 2008.
