The only way it gets worse than reading the latest pinko missive by Robert Redford on the Huffington Post would be if Michael Moore was checking your prostate at the same time and muttering, “No, no, no, that doesn’t feel right at all.”
Redford used to be a movie star and heartthrob until he began noticeably wizening in the 80’s (watch 1992’s Sneakers; Redford’s got more loose skin going on than Ed Gein‘s basement). After that, he largely moved on to directing crappy movies about how America sucks that no one watches, like 2007’s Lions For Lambs, and lecturing the rest of us about how we have failed to live up to his expectations.
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His current bugaboo is that evil companies are engaged in the political process. Redford warns:
Recently, the OpenSecrets blog revealed that the oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. We don’t have numbers for 2010 yet, but we do know that oil companies have put up most of the $8.2 million raised to block California’s clean energy law — a law that passed with bipartisan support and was signed by a Republican governor.
When one dirty industry can purchase that much influence, who will step into the ring for average Americans? Who will say that public health and public interest matter more than private industries’ desire to pollute?
You know what companies and corporations are? They are groups of people bound together in a common purpose. And according to the deep thinker Robert Redford, this is awful. So what’s Redford’s answer to the terrible threat posed by groups of people participating in the political system to achieve their desired ends?
Not surprisingly, his answer is different groups of people participating in the political system to achieve desired ends that Robert Redford happens to agree with.
Redford’s problem isn’t organizations per se – hell, some corporation inexplicably paid him $11,000,000 to star in 2001’s clownish The Last Castle, a movie that could only have been worse if it co-starred “The Situation” and was written by Paul Haggis. His free-range, organic, cruelty-free beef is with organizations that don’t parrot his party line. That’s an attribute Redford shares with many others in liberal Hollywood and with liberals in general – they love collective action, as long as it’s their collective action.
Whether it’s the global warming scam, sucking up to America’s enemies, or ensuring the tundra remains free of the scourge of providing jobs to regular people, liberals love corporations – their corporations.
Redford has a particular affinity for the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Note that it’s a “council,” so it’s clearly on the side of all that is right and good – not like an evil “company” or “corporation.” He’s particularly proud of the wonderful work it’s done ensuring that the barren, mosquito-infested, caribou dropping-dotted tundra of northern Alaska has remained gloriously free of oil development.
Sure, the tens of thousands of regular folks who don’t have the jobs that development would have created probably feel a bit differently, but their livelihoods are a small price to pay to ensure that liberal diners in Park City, Utah, can swill their chardonnay content in the knowledge that some wasteland thousands of miles away that they will never visit meets their exacting aesthetic standards.
With their nearly bottomless well of money and the means and ability to generate reams of slick, star-powered propaganda, the Hollywoodoids can and do “purchase” all the influence they could ever want. Contrary to Redford’s portrayal of his side as the underdogs, his bunch is outclassed by “Big Business” – let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that Redford’s side is Big Business – like Mike Tyson would be outclassed in a death match against a blindfolded, one-legged, third-grader suffering an asthma flare.
So when Redford asks “who will step into the ring for average Americans?” the answer is clear. It isn’t Robert Redford, and it isn’t his pals on the Left.