{"id":17051,"date":"2020-02-06T11:25:26","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T11:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shows4.com\/mobile\/?p=17051"},"modified":"2021-02-22T06:23:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T06:23:43","slug":"chris-evans-goes-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shows4.com\/?p=17051","title":{"rendered":"Chris Evans Goes to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"
Chris Evans, back home after a grueling production schedule, relaxes into his couch, feet propped up on the coffee table. Over the past year and a half, the actor has tried on one identity after another: the shaggy-haired Israeli spy, the clean-shaven playboy, and, in his Broadway debut, the Manhattan beat cop with a Burt Reynolds \u2019stache. Now, though, he just looks like Chris Evans\u2014trim beard, monster biceps, angelic complexion. So it\u2019s a surprise when he brings up the nightmares. \u201cI sleep, like, an hour a night,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m in a panic.\u201d
\nThe panic began, as panics so often do these days, in Washington, DC. Early last February, Evans visited the capital to pitch lawmakers on a new civic engagement project. He arrived just hours before Donald Trump would deliver his second State of the Union address, in which he called on Congress to \u201cbridge old divisions\u201d and \u201creject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution.\u201d (Earlier, at a private luncheon, Trump referred to Chuck Schumer, the Senate\u2019s top Democrat, as a \u201cnasty son of a bitch.\u201d) Evans is no fan of the president, whom he has publicly called a \u201cmoron,\u201d a \u201cdunce,\u201d and a \u201cmeatball.\u201d But bridging divisions? Putting an end to the American body politic\u2019s clammy night sweats? These were goals he could get behind.
\nEvans\u2019 pitch went like this: He would build an online platform organized into tidy sections\u2014immigration, health care, education, the economy\u2014each with a series of questions of the kind most Americans can\u2019t succinctly answer themselves. What, exactly, is a tariff? What\u2019s the difference between Medicare and Medicaid? Evans would invite politicians to answer the questions in minute-long videos. He\u2019d conduct the interviews himself, but always from behind the camera. The site would be a place to hear both sides of an issue, to get the TL;DR on WTF was happening in American politics. He called it A Starting Point\u2014a name that sometimes rang with enthusiasm and sometimes sounded like an apology.
\nEvans doesn\u2019t have much in the way of political capital, but he does have a reputation, perhaps unearned, for patriotism. Since 2011 he has appeared in no fewer than 10 Marvel movies as Captain America, the Nazi-slaying, homeland-\u00addefending superhero wrapped in bipartisan red, white, and blue. It\u2019s hard to imagine a better time to cash in on the character\u2019s symbolism. Partisan animosity is at an all-time high; a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found that 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would oppose their child marrying someone from the other party. (In 1960, only 4 percent of respondents felt this way.) At the same time, there\u2019s a real crisis of faith in the country\u2019s leaders. According to the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress behave unethically at least some of the time. In Pew\u2019s estimation, that makes them even less trusted than journalists and tech CEOs.
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