Index of University Press Releases

Farrell: Iraq is 'disaster of 21st century'

Seth Tupper
The Daily Republic - 10/07/2006

Fans of the television show “MASH” who expected actor Mike Farrell to reminisce about his role as Capt. B.J. Hunnicutt were in for a surprise Friday at Dakota Wesleyan University.
Activism, not acting, was the topic of the day as Farrell excoriated the Bush administration and other politicians for their positions on the war and the death penalty.

Playing to an apparently partisan crowd of about 500, Farrell drew loud applause when he said the war in Iraq “is the disaster of the 21st century so far” and added that the Bush White House employs “more slogans and more catch phrases and less thought than any administration in modern history.”

Farrell’s live interview with South Dakota Public Radio was part of a day of panel discussions and speeches at DWU titled “Celebrating a Legacy of Service and Leadership.” The event was one of many leading up to today’s 11 a.m. dedication of DWU’s George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service.

Farrell is a devoted activist for many causes. He has written an autobiography, “Just Call Me Mike: A Journey from Actor to Activist,” which will be released in March.

Farrell said his foray into activism began when he realized the platform he had as a celebrity to speak about issues that are important to him. He dismissed the notion that celebrities should abstain from speaking their minds about political issues.

“If the media point cameras and microphones at us rather than homemakers and plumbers and carpenters, that’s really a question for us as a society to determine whether that’s an appropriate way for the media to spend its time, rather than condemning actors for speaking out against or in support of certain aspects of issues,” he said.

The radio interviewer asked Farrell, a staunch death penalty opponent and the president of the Board of Death Penalty Focus, about South Dakota death row inmate Elijah Page’s recent effort to end his appeals and have himself put to death. Farrell called the situation “state-imposed suicide” and said an inmate’s supposed death wish is not a justification for capital punishment.

“Life without the possibility of parole ought to be the ultimate sanction in this country, in my view,” he said, “so that people die in prison not when they’re executed, but so they die when God decides it rather than when we decide it.”

Farrell linked the death penalty’s influence on the American psyche to the torture of prisoners in places such as Abu Ghraib.

“It’s OK in the mind’s eye of certain people in our country today to torture,” he said, “and I think that’s a direct result of the dehumanization process that we have allowed ourselves to get acclimated to with the use of the death penalty.”

DWU faculty member Jack Mortenson, who was in the audience, was so impressed that he asked if Farrell would consider running for president. Farrell said he has no desire to run for office, because he doesn’t want to “hold his hat out” for the kind of money it takes to win an election. He said he’ll continue to speak his mind, and he said actors and people with other occupations should do the same.

“One gets a job — one doesn’t turn in one’s card as a citizen,” Farrell said. “Just because somebody gets lucky in a position like an actor, that doesn’t mean that he or she should not still be an active citizen.”