Outside the Beltway

WHINY CELEBS

James Joyner · Friday, April 25, 2003 · 1 comment

Hugh Hewitt takes celebrities to task for expecting to have their say on political issues without any consequences:

Robbins gets the “biggest whine” prize. “A chill wind is blowing,” he intoned in hilarious self-parody at the National Press Club. The breeze he felt was in fact that of a younger demographic waving goodbye to the tired hypocrisies of the aging left. Hypocrisy is the best that can be said about Robbins and his life-partner Sarandon posing as victims, since both have been noisy supporters of boycotts and paybacks in the past: Sarandon urged Dr. Laura be run off television, and Robbins wanted Elizabeth Hurley in the dock for crossing a SAG picket line a few years back.

Yet now they talk about a new “climate of oppression.” (Real victims of political pressure, say in Cuba or Iraq, would be astonished to learn that pampered elites in the West think it’s tough sledding to have people say critical things about you and not buy your CDs.) The level of ignorance about what the First Amendment even is–a restraint on government, not private speech–makes these celebrity politicos even harder to take seriously.

No joke. I own DVDs of movies featuring Robbins and Edward Norton (also mentioned in the piece). I’m not going to burn them in a show of spite. If they are in other movies I want to see, I’ll certainly watch them. But anyone who wants to boycott their work is perfectly free to do so. As long as government actors aren’t attempting reprisals, I’m not sure I understand what the problem is.