Actress Susan Sarandon embodies the definitive caricature of the raving socialist so brimming with “compassion” and with an estimated net worth of $50 million. She infuriated liberals by telling MSNBC host Chris Hayes on March 28 that she can only envision Bernie Sanders for president: “I really want to be on the right side of history and this is a shot we're not going to have in my lifetime to have a candidate that's so morally consistent,” while Hillary Clinton is a stalking horse for Wall Street or “fracking or Monsanto.”
She wouldn’t relent and say she’d vote for Hillary instead of Trump: “Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know, explode.” She didn't mean Trump was the revolutionary, only that he would cause America to become unglued and make things ripe for the Revolution. He could be Sarandon’s Somoza, or Batista.
On March 27, the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times featured one of its “Table for Three” discussions at Il Cantinori, which the Huffington Post calls “the hot restaurant for the Greenwich Village celebrity crowd.” Times reporter Philip Galanes interviewed Sarandon and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Sarandon dragged out her old story of redistributionist compassion as a child: “Even as a kid, I rotated my dolls' dresses so every one got a chance to wear the good one. I think it's innate. Or maybe it's about being the oldest kid in the family, the caretaker?”
She proclaimed she fell into acting as a “seeker” for social change: “I wasn't interested in acting. But it was the '60s. I was a seeker. And what acting depends on is imagination, which creates empathy and also leads to activism.”
Nowhere in this sprawling interview did the Times use a word like “liberal,” “leftist,” “socialist,” or even “progressive.” Their lingo is only to call it “activism.” Sarandon has “spoken out on a wide range of social, environmental, and political causes.” Booker was also “a longtime activist for social justice.” The headline of the article was “On Purposeful Paths,” modified on the inside pages to “Choosing a Purposeful Path.”
To Sarandon, acting “forces” compassion, places you in another’s shoes, so being a socialist naturally follows: “I'm lucky to be in a business that's almost forced compassion. I get to show you that you can identify with someone you never thought you'd be able to feel for. That's what Dead Man Walking is about. We all make mistakes. But by connecting with the divine in each other, we can be redeemed.”
Despite Sarandon’s compassion for Death Row prisoners, her feminism meant she couldn’t muster the same feeling for unborn babies. She told the Times her parents had nine kids “thanks to Catholic indoctrination on birth control.”
We wonder which one they wished weren't alive. Maybe Susan?
When Galanes asked about political correctness and said he found it almost refreshing to be called the F-bomb for gay men, Sarandon was horrified: “‘Politically correct’ is almost as good an expression as ‘right to life.’ There's nothing political about hatred, and there’s nothing correct about it, either. We need to have a dialogue about where the hatred comes from.”
Galanes closed by fearing mass incarceration of blacks. Sarandon shot back: “What are you afraid of? You’re a privileged white guy. You’ll get off.” She lamented privatizing prisons that “make money by rounding up a population without a voice.”
No one asked about that $50 million, and why Ms. Compassion won't part with it.
