"From my cold dead hands"

Charlton Heston?! What?! not Charlton Heston say it aint so! Everyone is going to say that he was an actor of considerable talent, and that he was a person whose character preceded him. But he was truly an icon, a part of Americana that we all can lay claim to whether is attracts or repels us.

First of all lets address the obvious, ‘Hardcore Republican Conservative’ blindly following a dogmatic agenda, but he was really much more then that. Before it was fashionable for actors to enter into the arena of politics, he marched with Martin Luther King, he marched to oppose the war in Vietnam, and after the Kennedy assassination he stood up for gun control laws. I don’t think that his political stance during and after the Reagan era fully quantified him, because his history of political activism seems to follow the notions of a man that was guided by an individual conscience rather then a predetermined ideology.

I must admit, that whole “cold dead hands” bit that is priceless!! Who could pull that off? he was the consummate dramatic professional. I remember seeing him years ago on the Bill Maher’s Politically Correct he was sitting across from Lisa Kudrow, and she was arguing some anti-gun stance, she was attacking not only his political stance but his moral agenda. Being the perfect gentleman, he let her ramble just enough not to let her embarrass herself, then he leans in and in that low baritone grumble doing his best Moses from The Ten Commandments says “Let he who is with God go with me” the room fell dead silent, and you could visibly see her swoon.

Okay he was an icon, it’s not just that, but admittedly and it goes to tell, (in a story of which we don’t have time for here), I have never had a father. So what I have learned to do was to gather elements of my surroundings; My Grandfather, Uncles, Sports icons, Movies and Literary Characters. I remember he was in The Planet of The Apes “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”, (sorry I needed to get that out) Soylent Green and of course The Omega Man, THIS WAS MY FAVORITE, I know it wasn’t one of his best roles, but to me it embodied that quality which I admired most about his characters, he seemed to embody that solitude that only real men can truly comprehend, burdened by our own egos, ignoring an overwhelming sense of self doubt, serving the ideals that coalesce our concealed destiny. he was Diogenes`s point of reference, and the archetype of Shakespeare’s Paragon, In Bowling for Columbine when Michael Moore baits then attacks Mr. Heston (who was admittedly suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s), it was like watching the fall of one of my heroes, and part of me, (I am not crazy I will elaborate more on this later)

And you my Father there on your sad height, curse bless me now with your fierce tears I pray
-Dylan Thomas

See, what a grace was seated on this brow;Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed; Where every god did seem to set his seal; To give the world assurance of a man:

-Shakespeare