I am someone who has been in the Theatre profession all my life (including growing up with an actor and director as a father and married to an actor, singer and director). I also have a brother who was a journalist and newspaper editor most of his life. I am extremely insulted and hurt by the recent editorial on the opinion page of Thursday’s News Journal.

Actors are empty vessels, as a group not the brightest tools in the box. Celebrities should forego their right to free speech and stay out of the political process. The author actually said that. That is his right. I must ask, who is the next group who should forego their right to free speech and political commentary? Teachers? Factory workers? African Americans? Farmers? Journalists perhaps?

He used his words the same way Meryl Streep did at the Golden Globe Awards. Because he is a journalist and not an actor at an awards show gives him that right? No, the Bill of Rights gives him that right, just as it does Ms. Streep.

Clearly I accept the fact that he has the right to say what he did. He should accept Meryl Streep’s very same right. Entertainers use awards shows. He uses a newspaper. In Clinton and Highland counties and online, more people probably saw his editorial than watched the Golden Globes.

What a wonderful world it would be to open a newspaper and read an editorial opinion that does not insult and stereotype an entire group of people as this one did.

Becky Haines (whose vessel, by the way, is far from empty)

Wilmington