Kelsey Grammer

The entertainment industry is notably short on actors who are confident enough to express any rightward beliefs in notoriously left Tinseltown, but one of the few who does, actor Kelsey Grammer (best known for his role as Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers and then later Frasier) told the New York Post that once he's done with his thespian career he may end up running for mayor of New York City.

The RightNetwork backer told the New York Post's Sean Daly: "I have had a great career and extraordinary opportunities, but I look at my political aspirations as that last piece of my life -- where I hope to do something good for people and pay back a little."

On Monday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar and comedian Lewis Black berated right-leaning celebrity Kelsey Grammer for his involvement in promoting the new RightNetwork, with Behar lamenting, "Just what we need, more right-wing rhetoric." The HLN host soon portrayed Grammer as "the rich constantly bitching about taxes," and suggested that conservatives like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, whom she sarcastically referred to as "brain trusts," don’t "give a damn" about the poor:

JOY BEHAR: Well, they don`t seem to care about poor people. Do you think Sarah Palin gives a damn about poor people or that other bargain, Michele Bachmann? They don`t care, those two brain trusts.

LEWIS BLACK: No, they don`t care, and they act like they`re getting something. What the poor are getting at this point allows them to breathe. They act like they`re going to clubs, they`re having the time of their lives, there`s nothing better than poverty.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, April 19, Joy Behar Show on HLN, with critical portions in bold:

"At some point, I'm still trying to figure this out, we became a nation that honors failure and rewards it, instead of honoring success and rewarding it," actor John Ratzenberger told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on Wednesday's "Your World" program. The "Cheers" alum appeared at the Sacramento Tea Party to register his concerns about government tax and spend policies. [full video by Fox News here. Audio excerpt here.]

"I've always celebrated common sense, it's not a Democrat or a Republican issue," Ratzenberger insisted, to be concerned about the high taxes which are driving small business and the jobs they provide, to leave California.

Ratzenberger's remarks echo conservative sentiments expressed recently by his fellow "Cheers" alumnus Kelsey Grammer, who told CNSNews.com that President Obama's policies punished success while bailing out irresponsible people who took on second mortgages they could not afford:

While many Hollywood stars may have raised a champagne flute yesterday to mark President Obama's signing of the stimulus package, actor Kelsey Grammer was not among them. The actor best known for his roles in "Cheers" and "Frasier" told NewsBusters's sister organization CNSNews.com recently that he was a "free enterprise guy" who feared that CEO pay caps included in the corporate bailouts were a "sort of a deal with the devil."

CNSNews.com staffer Nicholas Ballasy caught up with Grammer recently at a ceremony marking the reopening of Ford's Theatre where the actor panned the package as rewarding "evildoers" who have wrecked the economy: