The New York Times is breaking news today that The Great Liberator, astronaut, former heartthrob Charlton Heston died yesterday at 84.
I hardly knew Charlton, and arguably his best work came well before I was born in the late 1970s. He is perhaps best-known for having let the Jews go from Pharaoh's oppressive rule in Egypt in 1956, and thereby founding the land of Israel. This action earned him a position in the best-selling book collection ever written, the Holy Bible. In fact, they dedicated an entire book to him, and called it, appropriately, Exodus.
Although denied a Bible nod, his later work was even more grand, more instrumental to securing liberty for all of mankind. After freeing the Jews, Heston set his sights on loftier goals: freeing all of humanity from its ape oppressors. He succeeded in this in 1968, the same year that he discovered the Statue of Liberty. Arguably, without Heston, America would not be what it is today, and apes would not be where they belong: with heart disease in the National Zoo. The apes were contacted for an interview, but refused to comment.
Ironically, in his old age, Heston sought to support the tools of oppression and violence against which he fought so vehemently in his youth. In 1998, the National Rifle Association elected him their president and he fought hard to ensure that every American could continue to keep and bear firearms. Ironic, of course, because neither Pharaoh nor the Apes had firearms to bear; had they, it's likely that his liberation attempts would have been thwarted, and we would still be either building pyramids or kowtowing to our ape overlords.
Charlton Heston, you will be missed.
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