Rawboned actor Tommy Lee Jones played a borderland lawman in the Academy Award-winning "No Country for Old Men" and a grizzled rancher who carries the corpse of his murdered friend back to Mexico in "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada."

He grew up in Midland, Texas, where his father worked on oil rigs and his mother was a teacher, a beautician and a cop, according to an article on Jones ("Lone Star") in 02138, "a lifestyle magazine for a unique community of educated, affluent, and influential readers: Harvard alumni."

So the 61-year-old actor ought to be an expert in border issues, illegal immigration and the like, right?

In his interview with 02138 executive editor Richard Bradley, calls a proposed fence between the United States and Mexico, between El Paso and Brownsville, not to put too fine a point on it, "bullshit."

Jones says a border fence "bears all the credibility and seriousness of flying saucers from Mars or leprechauns. Or any manner of malicious, paranoid superstition."

More comments on the fence:

But you hear the talk.
"And the talk is worth headlines, the talk is worth attention, and that might lead to votes. It’s a predatory approach to democracy by those who would instill fear and then propose themselves as a solution. It’s very destructive. Very, very destructive. And it’s the perfectly wrong thing to do.

"First of all, it won’t work. You can’t build a fence that I cannot get over, through, or under if I want to go to Mexico. In that [border] country, you cannot do it. It’s a complete folly. Ecologically, it’s a complete disaster, and sociologically, it’s a complete disaster. It’s an act of fascist madness.

"And the people who are being appealed to, the voterships that are removed from that country, are being spoken to as if it’s time to fence their backyard so the stray dog doesn’t get in. 'OK, let’s just build a fence.' That’s as far removed from reality as can be, and entirely cynical by those who would manipulate these people. It’s a sad day for the democratic process to see people manipulated through fear and insecurity."

Jones, 02138 reports, earned a scholarship at a Dallas prep school, then went on to Harvard where he acted, played football and roomed with a guy named Al Gore.

His first film role was a bit part in what 02138 calls the "quintessential Harvard movie, 1970's Love Story" -- which, of course, was inspired by the aforementioned Mr. Gore.

(Not being a Harvard grad ourselves, we tumbled to this story through a posting by Luis F. Carrasco on the El Paso Times' entertainment blog, "Cinerama.") 

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