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 "I'm not Oprah," Robbins said, by way of introduction to a packed library auditorium.
Robbins, whose film credits include "Mystic River," "Bull Durham" and "The Shawshank Redemption," said Edwards has been overlooked as the media focus on the clash between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
"There is one man who is neck-and-neck with these two in the polls," he said of Edwards. "And he's there because he's listening to people. He's reaching their lives with his campaign."
With Bill Clinton campaigning for his wife and Oprah Winfrey campaigning for Obama, celebrity sightings are becoming increasingly common on the campaign trail. Actor Kevin Bacon was to join Edwards later this week. And singer-songwriters Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt are scheduled to perform at Edwards' town meetings in New Hampshire next week.
Edwards was on the third day of an eight-day bus tour through Iowa.
The campaign setting was not entirely alien to Robbins. He's well-known as a liberal activist and even played a candidate running for the Senate in "Bob Roberts," a film he also wrote and directed.
Robbins was not kind to the media, accusing it of having skewed priorities.
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 "What if instead of 24/7 coverage of the most recent pop star's fall from grace we would see 24/7 reporting of veterans returning from Iraq," he said. "How do THEY feel about occupying a country and being caught in a crossfire of a civil war?"
Robbins added: "We are owed information, not gossip. And yes, celebrity culture is part of the problem. It's not what I know, it's what you know. It's what the people who don't have access to microphones in front them know."
He blamed the media for prematurely narrowing the presidential contest.
"When I was here eight months ago with eight viable candidates running, we were being sold a fiction of this being a two-person race," Robbins said.
[Associated
Press]
Compiled by Jim Kuhnhenn.
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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