His cold, now dead, hands

(Photo by the Associated Press) Mr. Heston was always able to channel some energies into the public arena. He was an active supporter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling him “a 20th-century Moses for his people,” and participated in the historic march on Washington in 1963. Left, he joined civil rights protesters picketing a whites-only restaurant in Oklahoma City in 1961.

Charlton Heston wasn’t always destined to be kook. He had one of those legendary Hollywood careers. He was a moderate who supported Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. And, more importantly, he used some of his Hollywood cred to back civil rights. He fought for good causes and was, even when he became more conservative, a truly compassionate one.

Heston even supported gun control, especially after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Which was why it was so jarring when he later emerged as the face of the National Rifle Association.

Heston has died at 84 and all most people will remember him for was holding that rifle aloft and screaming.

But, even at his most strident, true gun nuts questioned how truly committed he was, citing his earlier desire to rip guns out from their cold, dead hands after his buddies MLK and JFK were killed. I mean just because a couple of patriots (what else would you call people who know how to shoot guns?) killed your buddies isn’t reason to go soft in the knees.

We’ve got a militia to organize here. If and when we need on. It’s a right and Heston, once upon a time, was going to take that away from us.

His spoof of the NRA in the early 1990’s, when Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill into law, was easily the most effective anti-gun propaganda anyone could create. And it was funny.

Heston would later show he was at least crazy in other ways. In a December 1997, Heston trivialized the Holocaust and made disparaging remarks about women, gays and lesbians, and African Americans in a speech, drawing praise from David Duke.

I, for one, prefer to give more weight to the good work he did in his political activism before he went off the deep end. I’ve posted obituaries in arts & media.