All right, all right, all … wait, what?
Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey briefly channeled his signature character Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused” Sunday while delivering Independence Day wishes on social media, saying that America was “basically going through puberty” compared to other nations.
“Happy Birthday, America. Yes, indeed,” the “Dallas Buyers Club” star drawled at the beginning of a two-and-a-half minute video posted to Twitter.
“As we celebrate our independence today, as we celebrate our birth as a nation, the day that kick-started a revolution to gain our sovereignty, let’s admit that this last year, this trip around the sun, was also another head-scratcher,” added McConaughey, apparently referring to the social and political upheaval that marked 2020, along with the devastating coronavirus pandemic.
“But let’s also remember that we’re babies as a country,” the actor continued. “We’re basically going through puberty in comparison to other countries’ timeline, and we’re going to go through growing pains. We are going through growing pains. This is not an excuse, this is just the reality, and this is good, because we got to keep learning, we got to keep maturing, we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta keep building. And we gotta make sure we maintain hope along the way, as we continue to evolve.
“Why?” the actor went on. “Because it’s who we are. Why? Because the alternative sucks.”
Later in his message, McConaughey described America, and American citizens as “an aspiration”.
“We’re constantly in motion, we’re on the way, trying to get wiser, trying to get braver, trying to dream more, trying to do more, trying to be more fair, take the right kind of responsibilities, to gain the right kind of freedoms, and we gotta keep realizing that we’re a place where our individual pursuits and desires need to be appreciative and supportive of our collective responsibilities as Americans,” he said. “Hence, the United States of America. Sure, we’re each unique. We’re each independent. We each have innate abilities that others don’t have, as people and as states. But at the same time, we are all in this together, and if you don’t purchase that, move on. Go somewhere else.
“So, as we celebrate the red, white and blue this weekend, let’s be sure and just reflect just a minute, take a little bit of inventory on where we’ve come from, where we are and how and where we want to go from here on the way to being the best we can be,” McConaughey concluded. “Now what if that was a song, and each of us just said, ‘I can’t not sing that song’? I want to be a little bit better, you want to be a little bit better. Let’s be on the way to being the best we can be. Let’s make that a song we can’t not sing. Why? Because it’s who we are. It’s who we gotta be, and again, the alternative sucks.
“Let’s rock, America. Happy Birthday, just keep livin’. I’ll see you there.”
If the message sounded like a distinctly McConaughey call for unity, that may not be an accident. The actor has publicly mused about running for governor of Texas next year, and a new poll shows that may not be a far-fetched ambition.
A new poll of registered Texas voters from The Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler published Sunday showed McConaughey and incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott in a statistical tie, with Abbott receiving 39 percent support, McConaughey getting 38 percent, and 23 percent of respondents saying they would vote for someone else.
By contrast, the poll showed Abbott with a 12-percentage point lead over former US Rep. and 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has also considered challenging Abbott in 2022.