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Earth to Matt Damon, it's 2015!
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By Andrea Peyser
October 5, 2015

Earth to Matt Damon, it's 2015!

Matt Damon is an insufferable jerk. You know it. I know it. Rupert Everett most certainly does.

The Hollywood liberal (read: smug hypocrite) has interrupted the outer-space high surrounding Friday’s release of his Oscar-bait star turn, “The Martian,” to conduct a parallel “I’m Not a Homophobe” tour. But it’s only driving him deeper into the quicksand with LGBTQ types and those, like me, who couldn’t care less whom a performer loves. It’s 2015, Matt. Get over yourself!

He should grovel. GLAAD should dedicate a lecture series to him.

He should shut the hell up.

I’ve about ceased getting worked up over idiocies uttered by famous lefties. (Filmmaker Michael Moore alone could send me into agonizing paroxysms if I let him.)

But pathetic utterances made by Damon, 44, about race and, especially, homosexuality in the last few weekshave sucked him from Mars down into the sewer of soiled progressivism, and earned him the Twitter hashtag “#mattsplaining,” a takeoff on “mansplaining.”

In an interview with The Guardian last month, Damon grappled, in cringe-worthy detail, with an issue best left to a priest, a rabbi or a psychotherapist: His own sexuality — and that of his Tinseltown cohorts.

The conversation turned to Damon’s portrayal of Liberace’s gay lover in last year’s “Behind the Candelabra.” And Damon launched into a mattsplanation about gay rumors that swirled around him and buddy Ben Affleck after they worked on 1997’s “Good Will Hunting.’’ He seemed most freaked out about being forced (in his mind) to deny he was homosexual.

“It’s just like any piece of gossip . . . and it put us in a weird position of having to answer, you know what I mean? Which was then really deeply offensive,’’ he said.

“I don’t want to, like, [imply] it’s some sort of disease — then it’s like I’m leaving my friends under the bus.”

He should have stopped there. But his mattsplaining (and gay-shaming?) was just getting started.

“But at the time, I remember thinking and saying, Rupert Everett was openly gay, and this guy — more handsome than anybody, a classically trained actor — it’s tough to make the argument that he didn’t take a hit for being out.”

And, drum roll, please, “Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play. I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you, period.”

Hogwash!

Damon all but shouted, “I’m heterosexual!” by peppering the interview with references to his wife (a woman!), three daughters and a stepdaughter.

Does anyone care?

Damon, who has built his reputation on being a Hollywood good guy, effectively encouraged performers to hide their homosexuality, while enabling Everett’s self-pity. For years, the “handsome,” “classically trained” actor, now 56, has blamed his dearth of roles on his open homosexuality, rather than his appearances in such cinematic stinkers as “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

Damon found sympathy Wednesday from, of all people, Ellen DeGeneres (a lesbian!) whining on her TV talk show that online trolls had twisted his words to make it seem as if he meant gays should march back in the closet.

Well??

By encouraging sexual “mystery” among performers, Damon dissed the many openly gay people who enjoy stardom on stage, screen and TV. To name a few: Neil Patrick Harris, Zachary Quinto, Jane Lynch. Ellen DeGeneres.

Even before the gay remarks, Damon, a white man, put his foot in it on the Season 4 premiere of HBO’s “Project Greenlight’’ by interrupting black, female film and TV producer Effie Brown with his politically incorrect views on racial diversity. Damon apologized.

But he’s holding firm on his gay philosophy.

I don’t care which stars are gay, nor do I care that Damon says he’s not. I don’t buy movie or theater tickets or click on the TV or Internet hoping to hear celebrities’ unscripted meditations on same-sex relations or skin color. It’s time for Matt Damon to stop protesting.

Maybe getting stranded alone on Mars would do him good.

©2007-2025 Andrea Peyser and andreapeyser.com; No Reuse without permission.
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