Hollywood Goes Ballistic Over Missile Scare in Hawaii

There goes Hollywood again — reacting inappropriately and pointing fingers at the wrong people.

Countless residents of Hawaii feared for their lives on Saturday when they received a message to seek immediate shelter from an incoming ballistic missile. There was no missile. About 38 minutes of understandable panic ensued before authorities sent out a definitive all-clear.

An employee of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (EMA) tasked with testing the alert system that morning had, alas, selected the wrong option on a drop-down menu. The choices were “test missile alert” and “missile alert.” A slip of the mouse later, the terrifying message of a nonexistent missile blasted across multiple channels, including cellphones and television screens.

The unnamed individual has been temporarily reassigned, according to NBC News. Vern Miyagi, who oversees the EMA, said the employee “feels terrible” about the incident. The civil defense worker was “counseled and drilled so this never happens again,” Fox News reported.

But that did not stop some entertainment elites from declaring that Hawaiian authorities had pegged the wrong person. According to Jamie Lee Curtis, Jim Carrey, and others, the responsibility for the false alarm lies with — you guessed it — President Donald Trump.

Shocker.

On Monday night’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham poked fun at two of the most histrionic tweets from a pair of Hollywood’s “lunatrons.” She first noted that the incident itself, of course, was not funny in any way.

Jamie Lee Curtis placed the blame for the errant mouse click squarely in President Trump’s lap. Her over-the-top tweet as of Monday night had more than 18,000 retweets and 40,000 comments.

Said Curtis, using all caps at times just in case people didn’t get her message: “This Hawaii missile scare is on YOU, Mr. Trump. The real FEAR that mothers & fathers & children felt is on YOU. It is on YOUR ARROGANCE. HUBRIS. NARCISSISM. RAGE. EGO. IMMATURITY and your UNSTABLE IDIOCY. Shame on your hate-filled self. YOU DID THIS!”

Said Ingraham, joking about the villain of the 1978 slasher film in which Curtis debuted, “Jamie Lee Curtis wants her followers to believe that Trump is Michael Myers from the ‘Halloween’ franchise.”

The Fox News host added, “When you’re that hateful, without a single fact on your side, well, you’re far from perfect.” She then playfully referenced the 1985 film, “Perfect,” in which Curtis starred alongside John Travolta.

“I might not look to her for political analysis, but if I’m looking for a great pair of leg warmers, I’m calling her first,” Ingraham said of the 59-year-old actress — who millennials may recognize as the woman who appeared in Activia yogurt commercials touting the now-debunked claim that the product aided digestion.

Not to be outdone, Jim Carrey, whose tweet suggests he may have been in Hawaii at the time, said this: “I woke up this morning in Hawaii with ten minutes to live. It was a false alarm, but a real psychic warning. If we allow this one-man Gomorrah and his corrupt Republican Congress to continue alienating the world we are headed for suffering beyond all imagination.”

Related: Hollywood’s Trump Hysteria Takes an Even Crazier Turn

Carrey is evidently not much of a fan of the current president. The day before the Hawaii incident, he also tweeted: “The only ‘s***hole’ Trump should worry about is the one under his nose from which he is constantly defecating.”

Lovely.

“Pardon us if we ignore your political theorizing, Jim,” Ingraham said, listing a number of comedies in which Carrey starred, suggesting the actor and comedian may have been a bit out of his lane with his tweeted remark.

She then offered him a compliment, saying he did “rock the green leotard playing the Riddler” in “Batman Forever,” which she described as the “worst Batman movie ever.” Later, she invited viewers to participate in her poll on social media on Carrey’s worst movie ever.

Some might (rightly) believe that Hollywood actors, generally speaking, are ill-equipped to pontificate on matters related to poorly designed software user interfaces. Others like Amit Ranjan, co-founder of SlideShare, are a bit more familiar with the perils of poor programming. Referencing the ease with which a too-hasty mouse click can wreak havoc, Ranjan astutely noted: “Perils of bad UX in government software! … Operator mistakenly chose latter option!”

“I think we are at the very limit. I am really afraid of this.” — Pope Francis

Actors, technology professionals and a slew of others weren’t the only ones weighing in on the topic. On Monday, expressing his feelings about the possibility of nuclear war, Pope Francis said, “I think we are at the very limit. I am really afraid of this. One accident is enough to precipitate things,” according to a report by Reuters.

And Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tweeted this: “Donald Trump is taking too long. Now is not the time for posturing. He must take this threat seriously and begin direct talks with North Korea, without preconditions, to de-escalate and denuclearize the Korean peninsula. There is no time to waste.”

Michele Blood is a freelance writer based in Flemington, New Jersey.

(photo credit, homepage image: Donald Trump, cut out and colored, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)