AMERICAN IDOL

In response to the frustrated statement: 'What difference does it make... maybe I should quit the theatre and go join the Peace Corps.'

"Are you doing good in all the interactions you have with the people you see everyday in your own neighborhood?

Do you act courteously to the drug store employee that rings up your potato chips, even though it's 3 in the morning and she's crabby and short with you? Do you hold the elevator door for the frazzled-looking guy rushing toward it, even though you're just as late for work as he is? When someone is upset or disagrees with you, do you listen and try to understand their perspective, or simply think of them as the antagonist?

If you don't take every opportunity to promote community in your day-to-day struggles, what makes you think that becoming an activist is going to save the world?

I doubt fundamentally that the Peace Corps, Children International and the ACLU are going to save the world. It will take billions of businesspeople, politicians, farmers, actors, fast-food workers, bike messengers, doctors, and others respecting each other and understanding a symbiotic struggle for the experience of life.

Try asking the McDonald's lady how she's doing. Then listen to her answer. That's how you start to make things better.

If gifted actors who care deeply about the human condition keep dropping out for alternative careers where they can make a 'real' change, then the profession of storytelling - which Joeseph Campbell and I believe is one of the most important jobs in any society - will lose its most valuable function: to hold up a mirror to mankind and explore its potential.

And then all we'll have is American Idol."

- Adam Dodds, 7th of July, 2005