Ladies and gentleman of the jury,

I stand before you today, not for any outrageous attorney's fee and not for fame, but because I believe that a good, innocent man is being wronged.

He is a man who, throughout his adult life, has taken it upon himself to engage young people in the political process, to help aspiring filmmakers break into Hollywood, and to star in one unbearable big-budget action movie after another because no one else would.

My conscience, dear jurors, simply will not allow me to stand idly any longer as my client slides further and further into National Punch Line Land. And so, I will prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Ben Affleck is not a jackass.

Folks, the prosecution, with its misguided 150 million plaintiffs - one-third of them In Touch subscribers, one-third Boston Red Sox fans who can't get tickets to games and resent seeing my client in the front row at Fenway Park every other week, and one-third who thought they were suing benzodiazepine - is wasting your time with the largest, most frivolous class-action suit of all time.

I, though, intend to be brief. While the prosecution will try to bury you with "news stories" from supermarket tabloids, I will invite you all to a free screening of "Chasing Amy." While the prosecution will inundate you with gambling records of what it deems to be William Bennett-esque losses, I will pass out DVDs of "Good Will Hunting" - the collector's edition, no less.

And while the prosecution plans to present as evidence the stripper pole (in a very large Ziploc bag) that got my client into so much trouble, I will remind the jury, especially you male jurors, that somewhere out there is a strip club now missing its pole.

Now, in the prosecution's laborious opening statement, you heard a lot of nonsense about a certain big-bottomed diva, about an oft-postponed and eventually cancelled wedding, and about two spoiled celebrities who claimed they hated the media spotlight but then, when they had a movie to promote, appeared on "Dateline" and shared — to quote the crass prosecution — "everything short of their underwear stains."

But, good, gentle folks, I don't need to tell you about the nature of love. We all know that it can do funny things to a person, and so I ask you to have sympathy on my client, again especially you male jurors, who, if you live long enough, will likely at some point be engaged to Jennifer Lopez.

I also ask you to remember that these days my client is blissfully free from all that mishigas (excuse my Yiddish). Indeed, he is now undeniably sane: Instead of wanting to get Ms. Lopez's posterior into bed, my client just wants get the president's out of office.

But lest you now think my client is some kind of out-of-touch "Hollywood liberal," I beg of you: Rent "Project Greenlight" and see him as the good-humored guy he is - a regular guy who wants to help struggling artists embarrass themselves on camera like he has been fortunate enough to do. And when you pick up US Weekly, ignore the salacious cover stories about my client, but pay attention when that magazine runs photos of him taking out the garbage, or sipping from a straw or something.

You will see that my client is not the arrogant, smug character he so often portrays. You will see that he deserves, like everyone does, except for the Bush administration, a second chance. And you will see that he sincerely does not mean to waste your money on tickets, popcorn, soda and a babysitter every few months.

Members of the jury, I can't emphasize this enough: Six more months of being go-to fodder for late-night comics and, um, newspaper columnists, and my client will be sleeping on the bottom mattress of Burt Reynolds' bunk bed. Think about the next time you consider mocking. His fate, my friends, is in your hands.

(Mark Bazer can be reached at mebazer@yahoo.com.)

(c) 2004 mark bazer, Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.