Authors: Shirley MacLaine
The Soviet Union may be no more, but Russia is eternal. Without understanding as best we can how the deep roots of two ancient religions inform many Russians’ thoughts and actions, as well as their art and culture, we are only witnessing a shadow play while the real actors and their underlying motivations remain undiscovered.
A
s I watch the news each night, I try to gain a greater understanding of what’s happening to us humans on our beloved planet. But more and more these days the news is mostly homogenized and without any objectivity or perspective. If we’ve seen one news program, we’ve seen them all . . . even Fox News. It’s the same news stories, just told in another (and often more colorful and entertaining) way. That’s why they have high ratings. But Bill O’Reilly is a bully for profit. He’s ridiculous. I’ve done his show because I asked to be on it. I remember a dinner I had with him and some other power brokers in New York. At one point he turned to me and said, “My God, you are actually a nice person. You aren’t stuck-up and acting like a celebrity.” I wish I had a snapshot of my face at that moment. Was he kidding or what? He was so small-town prejudiced.
When I went on his show he walked into the greenroom, imposing his significant height over my face, and said he was
surprised I showed up. I said, “Bill, I asked to be on your show to promote my book,
Sage-ing While Age-ing,
because I know you are interested in UFOs and what the real story might be.”
He puffed himself up even further and without missing a beat he said, “We are going to talk about the war in Iraq and how you Hollywood people think you know it all.”
I was fascinated to see how he steeled himself to get ready to go into attack mode. I protested that I didn’t want to talk about Iraq and he knew that from the preshow interview. He ordered me to sit down (his chair was a foot higher than mine) at his table and proceeded to berate me because I was from Hollywood. I told him I was from Virginia and could meet his patriotism any day. I said it wasn’t patriotic of us Americans to invade a country just because we didn’t like their despotic, cruel dictator. He went on to defend the war and to attack some of my friends in Hollywood on their antiwar stance, saying that they didn’t know enough about it to have an opinion—“and you don’t either,” he finally finished.
“No shit, Bill,” I said. “I’m not a military commander. So I’m not going to talk about it. I want to talk about UFOs and some of your opinions on such things.” He said, “You admit you don’t know about how to conduct a war in Iraq?”
“Yes, Bill. No shit. I already told you that.”
When I said “shit” he didn’t know how to react. I think he was worried that his show would be bleeped. Later, I told him that the most disgusting aspect of his TV interviews was how most of his guests sucked up to him in return for his having
them appear on his show. They would laugh nervously and never get mad or upset with him—another example of how dumbed-down and intimidated we’ve become in the face of right-wing power.
I’ve often thought about how he prepared himself for verbal battle like an actor who prepares for a scene. I remembered the bullying side he showed the world when his sex scandal and all that soaping up in the shower were made public. It made me suspect he is a more complicated and interesting man than his abusive, bullying politics would suggest. He’d be good for a reality porno show.
I like to get my news by holding a newspaper, but lately I’ve become reluctant to contribute to the cutting down of more trees so I subscribe to
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Time,
and
Newsweek
on the web. On television I watch CNN, BBC, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and MSNBC for news. I don’t like the clubby, bubbly, locker room atmosphere that the morning news shows have gotten into just to make us feel better and to suggest they are hosted by friendly, cheerful, real people. All it makes me think is: these news sets are where they actually live; these are the only people they know . . . day after day, hour after hour. I think of them going into makeup and hair and deciding if it would be counterproductive to change their image. Do they have stylists and press agents to
orchestrate how they are perceived when they feed us “real” news?
The whole world is show business now, and Obama is the prime example. What a family man, what a nice guy, what a patient intellect he has while his advisors do the necessary dirty work. His speeches are magnificently acted, but what would he be without a teleprompter? He has good writers, good comedy punchers, and an extraordinary capacity to maintain quiet dignity while he must be scared to death over what is happening in the world. Who is he really? Does he want to be president of the planet as some say his speeches in the Mideast, Germany, France, and England seem to indicate? Was he “chosen” by the global banking elite in the world because he can be made to see so many differing points of view? Is it beneficial that his family background is partly Muslim, which could be good for fostering world peace? Why is that such a scary idea to some people? Would he, in the last analysis, be in favor of a one-world currency and a one-world government? Does he have the tools to be a great unifier, or is he fated only to divide the country further? More to the point, is one-world government a good idea?
These are all questions that will never be answered—or even considered—by our current mainstream news organizations, but they deserve to be.
T
he George McGovern experience with Watergate, the break-in itself, the abuses of power by our FBI and CIA—that was enough for me. I spent a year and a half campaigning for George. The Nixon people made it clear to me that I was an enemy; my apartment in New York was ransacked beyond recognition, and the telephone lines cut to ensure that I got the message. I wasn’t on the “show business enemies” list; I was on the “political enemies” list. My phones were bugged by the Americans, the Swedes (I was having a relationship with their prime minister), the Russians (having a relationship with a Russian director), and the Aussies (having a relationship with the Australian foreign minister). My phone lines were not private and under constant surveillance until I became very serious (and chatty) about my metaphysics, the science of the soul, and the potential reality of our being visited by a more advanced interplanetary intelligence. That’s when everybody left me alone and decided I
was wacky. Except, I think, for military intelligence. I believe I am still being surveyed in every way by military intelligence, just in case one of those ships from a far-off planet picks me up one day.
Anyway, I am over everything that involves politics. What happens to me spiritually is far more important to me now.
When I watch the show business–like broadcasts of the news, I’m aware of a deliberate manipulation of the stories in service to higher ratings. At least Rupert Murdoch admits it. But the difference between any foreign news programs and ours is striking. We are not global thinkers. We are globally oriented only in the sense of caring about an international event in light of how it relates to us.
When I hear the controversy about sending more troops to Afghanistan, nobody but Christiane Amanpour mentions the value and power of the poppy fields and the opium trade. Who wouldn’t want to control the country where as much as
90
percent of the world’s heroin production is located? Why don’t our newscasters get past the point of imposing democracy on another tribal culture and get to the real point of why we’re there? Follow the money, as the old saying goes.
Let’s have some deep and probing investigative reporting on
why
so many people are addicted to drugs. If we did that I think we’d be into an investigation of the contemporary human spirit, of depression, of pointlessness, of spiritual poverty, and finally the addiction to serving whatever God we’ve been taught to believe in, whether it’s the Christian one, the
Islamic one, or any other. We know that more killing has occurred in the name of “God” than anything else. Did the Devil make us do it? Let’s investigate who we really are in relation to our beliefs, because if we don’t we are going to be forever manipulated by the real ruling elite in this world—the international banking community. In effect, “they” understand the real polarities governing our lives are not Good versus Evil, but rather Materialism versus Spirit.
I
n recent years, we’ve become so technology-obsessed that good manners probably belong in antiquity. When we leave a message for someone, we tell ourselves that we don’t need to be nice because we’re only talking to a machine anyway. But almost everyone I see out in the world today appears mad, put out, and in general they regard you as a pain in the butt if you’re over
50
.
It’s as though everyone comes from New York City.
The shop clerks wish you’d never come in, even though their shop is going broke.
The coffee vendors are simply cappuccino orderers with nothing to say to help pass the time.
The cash register clerks in the supermarket ring you up as though Al Qaeda is around the corner and they need to win “beat the clock” against the register and get out.
The people in Radio Shack don’t know what electronics are.
Waiters in restaurants have the amazing ability to avoid eye contact the moment you think you’d like the check or some service.
Young people who are out of work and want jobs won’t work for less pay than the maximum they think they can get. They feel entitled.
The young people are the leaders of the Rude Pack. I know the rest of us have screwed up the world, but I wouldn’t want to leave it to them anyway.
M
y time in Africa lives with me always. I will never forget the magic of such a place. More than any other place I’ve been, I wish to return to Africa. I would like to live on a wild game reserve and observe the animals all day. That would make me truly happy.
When I was there, I lived among the Masai of East Africa and what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania). I initially went to Africa to visit Robert Mitchum, with whom I was having a relationship. He was shooting a movie there. It wasn’t long before I became more interested in what I was seeing and learning than I was in Robert and the movie. I wandered off. Certain highlights stand out for me, things that I will never get over as long as I live.
The particular tribe of Masai I met had never seen a white person before. They could identify with my freckles, which they believed would someday grow together in order to make me more brown. They were friendly and wanted me to know them. They invited me to help birth a baby, where the mother
waited for me inside a hut. There was a fire in the middle of the dirt floor, smoke wafting everywhere as flies darted and landed on the mother giving birth, the newborn, the placenta, and me. Other women surrounded the baby as the mother chewed the umbilical cord away. Then the women handed the baby around the circle as each attending woman followed the custom of spitting in its mouth to welcome it (a girl) to the
menyatta
(the village). When the child was handed to me, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to contaminate the baby with whatever I might have brought from the Western world. The women seemed to understand. The mother asked my name. I said “Shirley.” She promptly named the child Shurri. I was honored.
Flash forward fifteen years later. I was doing a book signing in San Francisco. A young woman came up to me, handed me a ring, and said, “Hello again, my name is Shurri. You were there when I was born.”
How should I relate to this? She handed me a picture to prove that I’d been there. Synchronicity as a fact, not a coincidence, was becoming more of a reality every day. A year later, a man appeared at my doorstep in Encino. He handed me three stones, which he said came from the chieftain of the Masai tribe I spent so much time with. The chief wanted to be remembered to me. The man who brought me the stones was the man whom I ultimately went to Peru to visit. He was the person who said he had had encounters with extraterrestrials in the Andes Mountains. I could see the reality of the web of
synchronicity in my life. Out of the Peruvian visit came
Out on a Limb
, which I think helped birth a New Age spiritual movement.
I still have the ring from Shurri, and I had the stones from the Masai chieftain mounted in a triangular shape, which I not only treasure but also feel protects me.
I was besotted by Africa—the animals, the Masai (who believe they are on Earth only to protect our planet’s cattle), the landscapes, the miracles of nature I saw every day.
A few days after the birth of Shurri, I hired a plane to take me to Tanganyika and join what I thought was to be a photographic safari. The pilot turned up drunk in Nairobi, where we took off. So, on some level I had to help him land the plane on an isolated field in Tanganyika. I stepped out of the plane, not knowing where I was or where I was supposed to go to join the safari. Three Masai
morani
(warriors) came from the bushes. One of them said in English, “You are white woman named Shurri?” I nodded and followed him without asking any questions. What was I thinking in those days? Did I trust more than was wise? Did my middle-class “don’t dare” upbringing make me an adventurer, inspiring me to challenge any circumstance? I really don’t know. I do know I couldn’t do that now, whether it’s because I’ve gotten more cautious as I’ve aged, or because the world is a more dangerous place. And why is it more dangerous? Because there are too many people and there is an imbalance?