Charlton Heston

How did this guy get to play Moses? Sure, he's got a booming voice, but doesn't this violate rabbinical law? Ham isn't kosher.

Yeah, I know what you're saying: he won an Oscar for Ben-Hur. Well, who wouldn't, playing the title role in a four-hour epic that won more Oscars than any film in history? If Jim Nabors had gotten the role, he would never have had to do Gomer Pyle.

But in recent years, Chuck has turned his attention from acting to politics. In 1998, he became head of the National Rifle Association. Well, talk about the gang who can't shoot straight! After the 1999 Columbine High massacre in Littleton, Colorado, who does he blame? Those damned black trench coats. Somehow, in his feeble mind, guns had nothing to do with the killings.

In 1998, he went off the deep end as he stood before a right-wing group and denounced gays, man-hating feminists, Latinos and Blacks, whose mission he claimed was to subvert American values. Former Klansman David Duke was so choked up by Chuck's speech that he put it on his Web site. Gee, when are they going to do a movie about the white man's plight? Oh, the injustice!

Chuck gets uptight about gays, and it's not just because he ran around in a loincloth in Planet of the Apes. He insisted that the artist Michelangelo was not gay and that he played him as a straight guy in The Agony and the Ecstasy.

But if you want to avoid getting him really steamed, watch what you say about Ben-Hur. Author Gore Vidal, who helped write the screenplay, said a scene he wrote implied a teenage gay relationship between Chuck's character and another played by Stephen Boyd. Boyd knew the characters had a gay past, and in their big scene together he made goo-goo eyes at Chuck. But Chuck was clueless. Nobody told him because director William Wyler realized he would have a hissy fit if he knew.

Chuck has refused to believe any of this. He has insisted that Gore was barely involved in the movie. Gore proved him wrong, though, with an excerpt taken from Chuck's own autobiography.

But don't be too hard on Chuck. Maybe he never read his own book. Some folks don't think he has read the Constitution, either, even though he's always yakking about the Second Amendment. Oh, I'm sure he has read the Constitution, but he probably gets so mesmerized by the sound of his own voice that he doesn't comprehend what he reads.

Ted Baxter had that same problem on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.