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With Law & Order star Fred Thompson's well-publicized announcement of his presidential candidacy still fresh in everyone's minds, the LAT's Cause Cèlebré column takes an opportunity to evaluate the former senator's prospects for raising some of the seemingly limitless industry cash that rains down from the Southern California sky each time Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama set foot within the Los Angeles city limits. Unsurprisingly, the Times finds that the Republican's Hollywood fundraising time would be better spent robbing some Famimas at gunpoint rather than waiting around for a gay billionaire to throw him a Malibu beach party:

So what's Thompson to do? Take the show on the road and rake in the dollars elsewhere. The place that made the former Tennessee senator rich as an actor cannot be counted on to pour cash into his presidential run, especially if he's going around bashing gay marriage and Roe vs. Wade. The minute he comes out strong against embryonic stem cell research — a fervent Hollywood cause — he'll be banished from every cocktail party north of Sunset Boulevard.

"You're asking me if people here will support Fred Thompson?" said Donna Bojarsky, a longtime industry political consultant. "How do I put it? No. No. And no."

As unpromising as the above already sounds, things get even worse for Thompson: more socially progressive GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani has already planted his flag in Ron Silver, Hollywood's Token Conservative, appointing him a political advisor. We imagine the Thompson campaign might just cancel any planned L.A. fundraising trips altogether rather than suffer the indignity of begging Britney Spears, the town's lone unaffiliated Republican, to throw him a rager like the one Brett Ratner had for Hillary back in June.