Sandwiched last week between another of Justin Beiber’s car accidents
and another of Shia LaBoeuf’s public meltdowns,
it’s a pleasure to find a celebrity behaving with class and kindness, serving
as a positive role model instead of a cautionary example.
Boarding a flight Friday from Detroit to Los Angeles where
she is shooting a new movie, actress Amy Adams noticed an American soldier
being seated in coach, and decided to do something that she later told someone
she’d always wanted to do.
Jemele Hill, a fellow first class passenger, witnessed Adams
quietly requesting of the airline crew to switch seats with the soldier, whom
she didn’t know. She moved back to coach, and the pleasantly surprised soldier,
who didn’t know who his benefactor was, moved up to first class.
Hill immediately got the word out on Twitter, and upon
arrival at the airport Adams was beset by entertainment reporters pressing her
about it. “I didn’t do it for attention for myself,” the actress said
as she tried to duck away from microphones. “I did it for attention for the
troops.”
It’s possible that Adams developed a sensitivity to and
respect for military service members as an Army brat herself, born in Italy and
then moved from base to base until she was eight or nine years old. The
daughter of Mormons, she says
of her religious upbringing, “I can’t speak for everybody, but I know it
instilled in me a value system I still hold true. The basic ‘Do unto others…’ –
that was what was hammered into me. And love.”
It isn’t that Adams’ surrender of her first class seat was
an enormous sacrifice, just a simple, thoughtful, respectful gesture that
celebrities, accustomed to luxury comforts and special treatment, don’t usually
make. “The flight attendant even remarked to me,” said
Jemele Hill, “that in all her years of service she has never seen a celebrity
do something like that. Regular people, yes. But not a celeb.”
Comedian Louis CK has a routine
in which he jokes about having the impulse to do something nice for someone, an
impulse he never acts on but nevertheless feels proud of himself simply for
having considered it. As an example, he mentions military service members on
planes:
They always fly coach. I’ve never
seen a soldier in first class in my life… And every time that I see a soldier
on a plane I always think, “You know what? I should give him my seat. It would
be the right thing to do, it would be easy to do, and it would mean a lot to
him… I never have, let me make that clear. I’ve never done it once… And here’s
the worst part: I was actually proud of myself for having thought of this. ‘I
am such a sweet man. That is so nice of me, to think of doing that and then
totally never do it.’
Amy Adams not only thought about it, but acted on it. Especially
in comparison to egomaniac rapper Kanye
West, who had the nerve to compare his stage performances to the risks of
military service, or tone-deaf Gwyneth
Paltrow, who called internet attacks on her the “bloody, dehumanizing”
equivalent of war, Adams’ actions revealed humility and gratitude toward our
military who sometimes sacrifice life and limb in service to their fellow
Americans.
Her gesture was a small one,
but hopefully the attention it’s getting will spark greater awareness of our
debt to military service members and inspire all of us, celebrities and
otherwise, to find ways we can express a similar humility and gratitude.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 6/30/14)
