Widow of Navy SEAL Responds to Actor Controversy

Last Updated on December 9, 2019

A Navy SEAL’s widow left a fantastic response to questions about the actor who portrayed her husband being spotted at the DNC.

Some Trump supporters and some Republicans — which aren’t necessarily the same thing, it seems — were miffed when they heard actor Bradley Cooper had been spotted at the Democratic National Convention.

Cooper, you may recall, portrayed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in the film The American Sniper. Because of this role, apparently, fans of the film apparently assumed that the actor must have sided with the GOP.

One Twitter user posted a photo of a flock of sheep walking down the road with the comment, “Bradley Cooper is promoting Hillary? Too bad. He’s dead to me now.” Another labelled him as “supporting Socialism” and said he’d refuse to spend another dollar in support of.

But a role an actor portrays, I would hope more people would understand without having to be told, is not necessarily indicative of the actor’s personal beliefs or political stand; actor Jeremy Sisto, for example, portrayed Jesus Christ in a TV miniseries in 1999, but said he was not part of any religious group. (Some have claimed he is an atheist although he seems to have indicated shortly after the time of the production he was “exploring” several different religious beliefs.

Cooper himself told late night talk show host James Corden recently that he “was not expecting” the conservative backlash he experienced.

Enter the widow of Chris Kyle.

She apparently was asked for her perspective about the man who portrayed her husband, not only a Navy SEAL but a so-called “conservative icon,” appearing with “the enemy.”

In a lengthy Facebook post, she talked about the nation’s avoidance of “brave conversations:”

I choose my friends for their hearts. I choose them because I have the freedom to be myself with them and they have the freedom to be themselves with me. I choose my friends because I can have what I call “brave conversations” with them.

She then described a “brave conversation” as one in which she can disagree with someone, adding she considers that “brave” because it requires trusting the other person “to be kind” when she disagrees, that they will still love even when they don’t see eye to eye.

“It is brave because it requires me to stretch my mind,” she said.

Then she added this:

Erasing a person from our circle of friends simply because they don’t vote the way we would is, in my opinion, lazy.

There is a lot of laziness on Facebook these days. People are far too interested in shouting back talking points rather than being quiet long enough to actually consider someone else’s point of view. Even when you reduce a controversy down to a single issue, people want to ignore the simple point where actual unity might be reached, in favor of focusing on the bigger, broader sources of disagreement to argue over that, knowing all the while they are not willing to even consider a change of perspective.

It’s worth noting this Navy SEAL widow did answer the basic question about how she felt about Cooper attending the DNC:

I feel GREAT about it! It reminds me that I have friendships with people I can have brave conversations with. It reminds me that there is so much more to this world than politics. It reminds me that I have friends who want to be informed, who want to be part of history, and who will risk being branded one thing or another simply for exercising their right to FREEDOM to THINK and be a part of our democratic process.

Political affiliation is NOT the whole story. Attending a convention is DEFINITELY NOT the whole story.

We definitely need more “brave conversations” in this country. And we definitely need more people with the bravery to even consider starting one.

It’s a shame that cowardice is so much easier.

Her full Facebook post is below: