During Gene & Sophie’s visit to Camp Pendleton, they ask for and get a taste of boot camp for the Marines. After they finish, they return to the commander’s office, and he makes a brilliant suggestion - that Gene put a visit to the troops on his schedule. Gene agrees it’s a great idea, and off he and Sophie go to the Long Beach Veterans Hospital.

This has to be the first time I’ve ever seen Gene Simmons cry, but I was crying with him. Quite humbling the whole visit was. Gene knows what’s important. I wish every American did.

And Gene Simmons made me smile again today after I read an interview he recently did with Radar Online. Sean Penn the “enemy of Western civilization.” Heh. Gotta love it! Here’s a portion of that interview:

RADAR: You seemed to have a deep respect for the soldiers you met at Camp Pendleton. What did you come away with?

GENE SIMMONS: It is embarrassing what’s happening to America nowadays. I’m embarrassed. The same thing happened in Vietnam, and I lived through that era. It was unbelievable. The answer seems to be, from some political experts, just get up and leave and the bad guys will decide, “Hey let’s disarm and everything’s going to be okay.” I’m so fucking sick and tired of such idiotic behavior.

It’s not the policies and the bills; it’s how we treat our military. It’s how we treat our young men or women who go out there, at 18 years old, and risk their lives. There’s no fame, they’re certainly not getting rich, and a lot of them are dying, simply for something they believe. By the way, it’s a volunteer army, all volunteer. The fact that anybody would have a fucking thing to say about that is astonishing. And the VA hospital that Sophie and I went to, it’s about an hour and a half down the road from Malibu. These morons can’t get up off their asses and out of their $10 million homes, get into their SUVs, and drive down to the VA hospital just to say, “Hey, what you do matters.” Doesn’t matter what they think of President Bush. It matters that 18-year-olds are getting out there and risking their lives. I didn’t see a single person there. That’s the most embarrassing thing. I’m furious at Hollywood.

No visitors at all?

No. Of course, if it means getting on a jet and going to Washington, D.C., to get in front of media, they’re all there. But they won’t get into a car where there’s no media and just go and shake the hand of a vet. And we met, as you know, Vietnam vets and Korean vets and Iraqi vets, and it just breaks your heart.

And here’s the venom for Penn:

But it seems like these people are protesting the war, not protesting the troops.

I don’t see the difference. Aid and comfort to the enemy is when you do it through media and there are big headlines like “We’ve Lost the War” and things like that. What makes you think that any graduate of any madrassa in the Middle East doesn’t blow that up? In other words, make a big copy of it and show it to everybody.

So someone like Sean Penn for instance … you don’t support what he’s doing?

Oh, I think he’s the enemy of Western civilization. I think he’s a terrific actor, but a political knucklehead. By the way, the difference between the Warren Beattys and Sean Penns and perhaps the Hannitys in the salons of the world is very little. The people who hate you don’t care what political side you’re on. They make no distinction between far left and far right. They just hate you. It’s so stupid. And the biggest problem, of course, is that media, no matter what you say, is skewed a certain way.

Folks like Gene Simmons, Ted Nugent, Montgomery Gentry, Stuck Mojo, et. al, truly understand what it means to be a hero. God bless ‘em all.