You see, dear reader, Ms Judd and I have spent some time together. Do
read on.

To set the scene, I should note that in early 2005, my then-employer
was a major donor to YouthAIDS, an "awareness" organization that does
some AIDS-prevention work abroad, but mostly appears to function as a
sort of clearinghouse for the easing of the celebrity conscience. (For
a sterling example of that, see its latest campaign.) One of its
periodic publicity tactics is the sending of its celebrities on junkets
to the wretched corners of the Earth: that's how Ashley Judd came to do
a three-nation tour of Africa in the winter of that year. YouthAIDS
invited the president of my employer, who didn't want to go
(Africa-phobia being a common affliction of the less-traveled
businessman). He passed it down to his subordinate, who passed it on to
hers, who passed it on to me. For my part, several days in South Africa
with a movie star sounded like a swell deal. And so I found myself on a
very odd trip with a very odd person. Given that Ashley's ambitions of
turning her online trip journal into a book have come to naught -- in
part, no doubt, because the YouthAIDS staffers kept having to scrub it
of bizarre details like rhapsodies on the tactile joys of cheetah
testicles -- history must know the truth of that voyage. Or at least,
my version of it.

And what, you ask, was travel with Ashley Judd like? For starters,
there were the little things:

She obsessively wiped down her little VAIO laptop with alcohol wipes.
To sterilize it. As she did after. every. use. (In her Glamour
confessional, she did mention this as a ÒcontrolÓ compulsion.)

She was badly constipated, perhaps because she chowed down on Powerbars
with alacrity. And she talked about it a lot.

She was prone to making pronouncements about her spirituality. After an
interviewer asked her about it, she replied: "Church and religion are
SO important to me. The God thing, the Jesus thing, the Buddha thing,
so important to me."
And then there were the bigger things.

My first meeting with her was in the South African Airways lounge in
Cape Town. She showed us this photo of her rallying the Cats fans at a
Kentucky basketball game. She said, ÒHave you SEEN this photo? I LOVE
this photo. We weren't doing so well, and so I came out at halftime --
even though I was on crutches! -- and rallied the crowd. And they
SAY...." -- dramatic pause -- "....that that made the difference in
bringing us victory."

Dumbly eager to ingratiate, and having swiftly realized that bringing
up Ensign Lefler was a bad move, I responded: "One of my friends sent
me that photo, telling me what a big UK fan you are."

Her eyes narrowed, and she assumed a look of boredom and disgust:
"Mmm-hmmm." She turned away.

Days later, sitting across from Ashley at a pleasant little
patio-restaurant on the sunny veld, I tried again: "My wife wants me to
tell you that she just saw De-Lovely, and she really liked your work in
it."

"Well, yeah," replied Ashley, as if I'd just announced a blue sky,
"It's a good movie."

Nothing quite seemed to work, and things only went downhill. One
morning, just after 10am, I found myself in the lobby of our hotel in
Johannesburg, waiting with the YouthAIDS personnel for a very late
Ashley. I called up an acquaintance in town with whom I was planning to
have dinner later, and in the course of the conversation, she expressed
immense excitement at the nearness of Ashley Judd, whom she apparently
admired. As she gushed about her admiration, lo, Ashley appeared,
walking a bit aimlessly through the lobby, holding a steaming teapot in
one hand and a handbag in the other. I should preface the following by
relating that when at the RNC in 2004, Mo Rocca was actually generous
enough to take my cellphone and chat with my wife for a minute (thus
earning me some points on the home front). I figured I might do the
same for this die-hard African Ashley Judd fan. Cell phone in hand, I
walked up to Ashley, who wore a confused look as I approached. She
pulled her handbag and teapot close to her, and I noted that the latter
had a large WOMEN FOR KERRY-EDWARDS sticker on it.

"Ashley, I don't mean to impose, but would you mind saying hello to one
of your South African fans?"

She narrowed her eyes at me and snapped, "Yes, I would mind. You need
to give me some time to get the cobwebs out!" I apologized and backed
away. My acquaintance did not speak with her adored celebrity, but she
did get to overhear someone she knew annoy her. I ended the
conversation and followed the YouthAIDS entourage out to the waiting
vehicles. Ashley staggered forward, gripping her pot of tea and taking
it into the car with her. One of the YouthAIDS staffers asked, "Do you
want a cup for that tea?" She mumbled, "I have one somewhere." But
where? In that newly-rented Land Rover? She slouched into the back seat
and disappeared.

When we arrived at the clinic we were visiting, a couple of the
YouthAIDS people came up to me: "What on earth did you do to Ashley
this morning?" I explained, and they told me that she was feeling
terrible. Make that TERRIBLE, in all caps. The poor woman had her
massage at 7pm the previous night, and went to bed shortly thereafter.
If this seems absurdly early, know that Ms Judd required a whopping
fourteen hours of downtime -- most of which was sleep -- per day. But
"traffic noise" woke her up at 6am (which struck me as unlikely -- she
was on the tenth floor of a well-appointed luxury hotel in placid,
leafy Rosebank). With the appointed fourteen hours thus interrupted,
she slept again till about 9:45am -- which meant that when I ambushed
her with the cell phone, she had just awoken. To top it all off, she
was now convinced that she had caught some manner of cold or flu from
one of the YouthAIDS staff members.

I need to add that this afflicted YouthAIDS staff member was a total
trouper. She worked hard all day, despite her constant sneezing,
sniffling, and coughing: three things Ashley Judd had not done once
since awakening and seizing her teapot. The staff member? Sent home.
Ashley Judd? She demanded the summoning of a Chinese
healer-acupuncturist so she might be cured immediately.

Now, let me remind the reader that we were in bloody Africa. There are
many lovely things about Africa, and especially about South Africa.
Still, continent-wide, the standard for a good day there is pretty set:

Do I own nothing?
Is my flesh rotting?
Do I have to sleep near or on feces?
If you can answer no to all three questions, you have had a good day in
Africa! The YouthAIDS staff scattered to the four winds, seeking a
Chinese healer-acupuncturist for Ashley. Mercifully, the hotel staff
knew of one. They'd dealt with American celebrities before.

Slumming it for the shorties.
Meanwhile, we went to clinics. We went to an orphanage. We went to
Soweto. And we saw horrible things. Dire things. Things like a kid so
poor he glided past us on a single rollerblade. Yeah -- one on one
foot. That impressed me. And every place we went, Ashley Judd swooped
down like a good Southern matron and hugged the small children. She
cried with destitute mothers. She stroked the heads of poor black
people. The photographers from Glamour and Conde Nast loved it. And
then, she's back in the car, and Ashley is tired, and Ashley is sick,
and Ashley needs acupuncture. I asked the YouthAIDS senior person
whether maybe Ashley was a bit spoiled, and she told me the story of
how Ashley refused to do their first promotional tour to Cambodia
unless she was allowed to fly British Airways first class all the way.
"That's quite an expense for us as a humanitarian organization....but
we ended up having to do it."

A profound love for humanity, but no time for humans: the very picture
of the narcissist celebrity leftist.

Fast-forward a few days. The road to the De Beers mines in Cullinan is
a long one, and so there was plenty of time for Ashley Judd, teapot in
hand and this time with a cup, to hold forth on the critical issues of
the day to the captive audience in her Land Rover. I sat behind her and
listened to her monologues on her constipation, her preferences in
clothing, and her water temperature preferences:

"You have to drink warm water -- body temperature is best -- because
otherwise the cold makes your gut clench up and the body has to expend
energy warming it. That's why I never use ice."

No one, including those who understood that this was utter nonsense,
contradicted her. After all, she also believes in qi energy and the
manipulation thereof by healer-acupuncturists. And that's not all she
believes in:

"We got this little wood ring....what was the tree called? Anyway, you
burn it because, according to African folklore, it wards off evil
spirits. Sort of like Native Americans and sage -- which I carry lots
of and burn all the time."

And then there was her little amulet around her neck:
"That? That's Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of Montana."

No further explanation was offered. The amulet, by the bye, rested
underneath another, cross-shaped one. [Ed. note: as I look up Lakshmi,
I see that she is sometimes perceived as the Hindu goddess of money, so
in fairness, perhaps I mis-heard that one.]

And then there was her participation in the great moral struggles of
the modern era:

"I was so thrilled to meet Bishop Tutu. He has been such a hero to me.
I used to listen to records of his speeches smuggled out in the 1980s.
He so inspired me, with his fight against these forces that totally
perverted and distorted what spirituality and religion are supposed to
mean. I really think that his fight then echoes my fight today in my
own country. I've gone and spoken with so many of these Evangelicals
and these conservative churches, trying to open their eyes to what
faith is supposed to be about." Sigh. "It's so much like Bishop Tutu's
struggle."

Historical NB: in the 1980s, Bishop Desmond Tutu was internationally
known and his speeches were widely available. Furthermore, no one
smuggled anything out on records. I'm just saying. On the positive side
of things, Judd is one of the few Americans I've spoken with to appear
to grasp that apartheid was at bottom a theological problem: although
comparing the Afrikaner perversion of Dutch Calvinism with Christian
conservatism in the United States is damned foolish.

In time, Ashley fell silent and began to brood. The other women in the
car started complaining about how the Bush Administration makes NGOs
receiving aid sign a pledge that they don't support prostitution.
YouthAIDS founder Kate Roberts fumed, "That's fucking ridiculous!"

"Why," I asked, Òdo you think it's ridiculous?"
"Because it just stigmatizes and denies aid to a whole class of people,
and it's an absurd precondition."
"You don't have to eschew prostitutes," I said, "just prostitution.
It's not like you support that, right?"
"Of course we don't support prostitution, Josh."
"Does it deny aid to anyone or restrict your work?"
"Well, no."
"Then why not sign it if it's just pro forma?" (Ed. note: because they
are pathologically unable to accept anything at all from the Bush
Administration -- even aid grants.)

Like a descending Fury, Ashley Judd whipped about to face me. She
barked, "Why don't they ask them to sign pledges that they support
gender equality? Equal pay for women? Education for women and little
girls? Huh?"

A deathly silence descended. Did I want to get into a shouting match
with the avatar of Desmond Tutu-in-America? No. Ashley rolled her eyes,
let out an exasperated sigh, and faced forward.

We reached the mines and went into a local clinic. There, I sat across
from Ashley Judd at a long table as we listened to a briefing on the
facility. It was sweltering hot, and she shortly gripped her empty
glass and looked around, mouthing the word "water." I swiftly seized
the nearby pitcher and poured Ashley Judd a cool, tall, refreshing
glass of ice water. She looked shocked, and then glared at me. She
released her glass, turned around, and pulled a bottle of (hopefully
warm) water out of one of the YouthAIDS staffer's hands. She guzzled it
all.

BFF.
For lunch, we went to a delightful open-air restaurant run by an
elderly Boer couple. We drank rooibos tea and scarfed down biltong in
the heat of a veld afternoon, and all was lovely. Ashley Judd regaled
us with tales of profound human suffering:

"I will never fly Virgin again. Last time, Dario and I were in the
first-class section, and they seated us where we could hear EVERYTHING
going on in the galley. Clink, clink, clink, the whole time. I asked
them to stop, and the little motherfuckers gave me such attitude. It
was horrible -- my husband saw what was coming, and he reached out to
hold my hand, and I bawled all the way from Los Angeles to London."

Later, emerging from a Catholic-run mental-retardation care facility
with some particularly horrific cases of human misery, she leaned over
to confide, "My sister could never handle this. Not like I can."