Hollywood Goes Gaga Over Obama

A fund-raiser for Barack "Barry" Obama will bring in a cool million tonight.

The Hollywood elite are forking over $2,300 per person to attend the event.

Hillary must be livid. (Isn't she always?)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Tom Hanks has bought a $2,300 ticket. So have Jennifer Aniston, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington. The studio bosses from Universal, Paramount, Disney and 20th Century Fox have all sent checks or faxed their credit card numbers, too.

Given the A-list stars, movie and music moguls, and top Hollywood dealmakers who have sent their R.S.V.P.’s, one would think the man of honor at Tuesday night’s benefit at the Beverly Hilton would be getting a lifetime achievement award. But the toast of the evening is Barack Obama, the 45-year-old first-term Democratic senator from Illinois, in his first foray to Los Angeles as a declared presidential candidate.

It is hard to say whether the unusual heat behind the evening owes more to interest in Mr. Obama or to the three men who spearheaded the fund-raiser: the DreamWorks co-founders David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.

The haul is expected to be at least $1 million, making it the first major event here of the presidential campaign.... Originally set for a restaurant with room for 400 people, the Obama event was moved over the weekend to a hotel ballroom with a capacity of 600, and payments were still filtering in by fax.

...Of chief concern to a much smaller group of fund-raisers was that they be credited for any attendees they invited; those with at least 20 tickets to their name have been asked to dine with Mr. Obama at Mr. Geffen’s Beverly Hills mansion after the reception.

One movie producer who raised enough money to attend the dinner said he had done so merely because many of his friends wanted to meet the senator but would have had no other way of buying a ticket — though he confessed that he also wanted to “kick the tires” on Mr. Obama himself. Yet he insisted on anonymity, saying he was also a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, and “I just don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

Yes, that's a problem.

What's an old Clinton chum to do?

Anybody who's anybody in Hollywood is supporting Obama.

Maybe some haven't really abandoned Hillary, but that's not keeping them from adding to Obama's campaign coffers.

...The scale of the event amounts to a coup, political operatives in Los Angeles said, since even veteran senators seldom take more than $50,000 to $100,000 from fund-raisers this early in the campaign cycle. Former Senator John Edwards, a frequent Los Angeles visitor, raised about $100,000 at a much smaller reception on Wednesday, for example — and the entertainment-industry contingent did not go much beyond the creator of the TNT show “The Closer,” James Duff, and the actor Gary Cole, who played a vice president on “The West Wing.”

Edwards seems to be going nowhere.

The only attention that he's been getting is because he hired the foul-mouthed, bigoted bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan to work for his campaign.

Let's be honest -- Gary Cole is no Tom Hanks.

I know Hanks was one of those celebs that bought a night in the Lincoln Bedroom when Bill Clinton was renting out rooms in the White House. I remembering him talking about his escapades there on a talk show. I think it was Letterman. "If the Lincoln Bedroom's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'."

(Here's Clinton's partial Lincoln Bedroom guest list. It's complete since it was compiled in February of 1997, before the country was introduced to Monica Lewinsky.)

It looks like Hanks and others on the Hollywood A-list don't mind taking the risk of hurting former First Lady Hillary's feelings.

Despite that, aides to Mr. Obama, loath to let the spotlight on their candidate drift to his wealthy donors or newfound Hollywood ties, declined to discuss the event except to say it would be closed to the news media.

I'm not surprised that aides want to play down Obama's connections to the rich and famous of Hollywood.

He wants to be seen as a man of the people, the real people.

But he's not.

Obama's being handed $1 million from America's wealthy royalty, but don't be fooled into thinking that he's detached from the little guy.

Remember, as he and his wife explained during their 60 Minutes interview, he can get shot at the gas station and he can't get a cab because he's a black man.

Sure.

I hope he doesn't have to stop for gas on the way to the fund-raiser, and I hope he has a ride lined up.