Robert Redford

Barack Obama's Hope and Change ether appears to be wearing off on Robert Redford.

On Friday evening, the Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist published a rather scathing piece at the Huffington Post about the man Hollywood blindly put all its faith behind in 2008:

Robert Redford's "The Conspirator" is a thinly-veiled political allegory warning against the danger of trying terrorists in military tribunals. And that's why his movie about the military trial of Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt is problematic.

That's not me talking, that's Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday in her April 15 movie review:

On Monday night's "Piers Morgan," the CNN host professed his admiration for President Obama – but like any good liberal, sounded his disappointment that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is still open. He tried to get his guests to share similar sentiments.

"I am quite an Obama fan, but I was quite disappointed that he did the big U-turn on Guantanamo, actually," Morgan admitted.

Hosting cast members of the upcoming film "The Conspirator," Morgan asked if the ethical issues in the plot – the post-Civil War trial of an accused co-conspirator in Lincoln's assassination – mirrored the ethical and constitutional questions of military trials of terrorists at Guantanamo, shortly after another American crisis.
 

Time's Ten Questions to Robert Redford drew some silly answers -- like Redford denying he's a lefty.

How helpful or harmful to your career has it been to be known as someone who is passionate about politics?

I am passionate. I am political about my country, about what it is, how strong it is, how strong it remains. [My last film,] Lions for Lambs, got rough treatment, and I think it was because — and I don't want to sound defensive — but I think it was misperceived. I'm not a left-wing person. I'm just a person interested in the sustainability of my country.

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.

His current bugaboo is that evil companies are engaged in the political process.  Redford warns:

On June 24, 2010, I had a post on BigHollywood that examined Robert Redford’s asinine statements about the Gulf Oil Spill. From his support of a drilling moratorium to the fact that he literally blamed the spill on Dick Cheney to the way he expected George W. Bush to respond instantly to Katrina, while making excuses for President Obama’s slow response to the BP disaster, his words were just another proof that many actors in Hollywood are out of touch with reality.

And although I hoped Redford would rethink his pomposity before speaking again on topics that he seems unable to comprehend, except through the prism of politics, it appears my hopes were misplaced. On Tuesday, the Huffington Post carried a statement by Redford wherein the actor lambasted Republicans for sinking Obama’s energy bill and with it “our moment to create two million clean energy jobs here in the United States.”

Where did Redford get such precise information about “two million” jobs? It seems like something that was conveniently snatched out of thin air, unless this number is a reference to jobs that the government would supposedly create in a faux clean energy market. But since when when has the government been successful in creating jobs?

Robert Redford, one of the most popular and succesful actors of our age, has joined with other entertainers, including Sir Paul McCartney and Rosie O'Donnell in encouraging the Obama administration to actively politicize the Gulf crisis and use it to push through on energy policy.

In an interview with ExtraTV, Redford said that Obama should "Grab this moment in history and get a decent energy policy." He also said "Here's a moment in our history where he [Obama] should grab leadership and run with it."

He said that "We blew it in the late seventies," referring to laws like the National Energy Act, National Energy Conservation Policy Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act made in the wake of the OPEC embargo and the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.

Actor Robert Redford lambasted America's energy plan that he claimed led to the Gulf disaster, laying the responsibility at the feet of former Vice President Cheney. Appearing Monday night on "Anderson Cooper 360," Redford blamed the Gulf oil spill not only on BP, but also because of the "failed" energy policy that led to this disaster.

'There's a lot being said about BP, and there's a lot of truth that's finally bubbling up to the surface," Redford acknowledged. "But what I'm more interested in is – is looking at it from a historical point of view and trying to connect some dots about how we got here."

"Look, I think one of the reasons we're in this problem is because we have not only a failed energy policy, but we have an energy policy – because of the way it was designed, and who it was designed by, Cheney – it's sick and it's dangerous."

On Saturday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Bill Whitaker devoted a full story to an environmental activist in Utah, Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted an oil lease auction by illegally making bids that he knew he could not pay, which slowed down the process making it possible for Barack Obama to block President Bush’s directive allowing the auction. Anchor Russ Mitchell introduced the report: "The Bush administration has less than three days left, but almost to the end, it’s been taking actions that have environmentalists fuming. One young activist used an unorthodox tactic, as we hear from Bill Whitaker."

After recounting that DeChristopher moved to Utah to attend college and became enamored with the beautiful landscape, Whitaker continued: "But where DeChristopher sees beauty, others see bounty. When one of the last-minute acts of the Bush administration was to auction off some of this land for oil drilling, the 27-year-old student said he had to act."

The "Yeas and Nays" gossip column in Friday’s Washington Examiner reported the liberal weirdness on display at the Kennedy Center when Robert Redford assembled poets aged 13 to 25 for a supposedly deep-thinking "spoken word forum" on the environment. One "def poet" who inspired Redford was George Watsky, who touts himself as the "Undisputed Backtalk Champion." But the snippet that the gossips used was simply bizarre, from a poem titled "I Am So Green."

I have green middle fingers and I flip the green bird....I am so green, Morpheus offered me the red pill and the blue pill, I chose the green one.

Redford is apparently dazzled by odd Matrix metaphors. "You cannot go through a day without seeing something real coming up in print, radio, TV, song, fashion or film," Redford said. "But this group added something new, and what is really important is that they are using both their ears to hear the adults that are making the policies to convey the depth and degree of their passion and their voices to demand that we participate in the system that is shaping them."

Not too many commentators seem to have noticed that George Soros is slowly but surely becoming the mainstream media that is the focus of the analysis we do at NewsBusters. The liberal billionaire-turned-philanthropist has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives.

You would think this the perfect formula for a blockbuster movie: megastars Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, and Meryl Streep teaming up to flood theaters with an antiwar film just in time for the holidays.

Well, think again, for it appears that this much-anticipated film, featuring the much-anticipated return of Tom Cruise to the big screen, is a bigger bomb than anything the enemy has been able to lob at us in Iraq since the surge began.

As deliciously reported by Reuters Friday evening (h/t NBer botg, emphasis added):

As irrefutable evidence mounts that Nobel Laureate Al Gore's climate alarmism is about nothing other than lining his supposedly green pockets with green currency, manmade global warming skeptics around the world wonder when the former vice president's house of cards will collapse.

Without question, if Gore were to lose the support of almost universally adoring Hollywoodans, the scam would implode quicker than a Democrat demanding a recount after losing a close election.

As such, the following comments by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford, reported by the New Statesman last week, should bring hope to folks not buying the snake oil Gore is selling (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Lee):

So, Do You Like Bush or Not?

It's getting hard to exaggerate the left-wing rantings of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. This week, he railed against the "criminal conspiracy to cover the ass" of the "fascist" Bush administration. It probably won't be long before he's dropping the F-word on-air. Olbermann also attacked the "nightmare presidency" of the current commander in chief and mocked Bush's "cynical exploitation" of 9/11. It's really a shame this guy won't have Rosie O'Donnell to follow him on MSNBC, huh?

She Likes Me!

Speaking of liberal MSNBC hosts (sorry for being redundant), Chris Matthews on Tuesday took credit for a line that Hillary Clinton recently used about leadership. Last week Mathews offered her some free advice and seemed pleased that she took it. "Well done," he enthused.

"Stop, hey, what's that sound?" Nuclear power getting put down. Again.

In 1979, musicians such as Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and Jackson Browne were hailed "the energy source everyone had been looking for" to fight against nuclear power. The result of their support was termed a "chain reaction." The group has returned, picking up where it left off nearly 30 years ago.

And what better to bridge the gap into the new millennium than YouTube. (Video after the break)

Over a span of three days, "Good Morning America" has devoted almost 19 minutes of air time to promoting "Lions For Lambs," the left-wing, anti-war drama starring and directed by Robert Redford. The promotional push continued on Thursday's show as one of the film's other stars, Meryl Streep, attacked Bill O'Reilly for what she apparently saw as questioning the patriotism of liberals. After co-host Diane Sawyer played a clip of O'Reilly wondering if Democrats really want to win in Iraq, the actress sarcastically stated, "It was my favorite thing that I ever saw Bill O'Reilly do. And so I lifted it out of his show and put it in the movie."

Streep derided O'Reilly's comments as the "wife beating question" and, in an annoyed tone, asked, "Are you still beating your wife? There's no way to answer it." Sawyer's interview came after a segment on Wednesday with the actress, director Redford and fellow star Tom Cruise. That followed yet another piece on Tuesday solely with Redford. On Thursday, Sawyer continued to laud what she saw as a brave film. The co-host gushed that "Lions For Lambs" wonders how "you strengthen the muscles of your convictions?" She fawned over the film, which involves a journalist lobbying other reporters to oppose the government's plans for war, by describing Streep's character as "a middle-aged reporter, facing the question of her job or her convictions. What does it take to be brave?"

Al Gore. Michael Moore. Robert Redford. On Wednesday, the actor/director became the third prominent left-winger to appear on "Good Morning America" this year and berate journalists for not being liberal enough. Redford, in his second GMA interview this week, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep stopped by to promote "Lions For Lambs," their new anti-war drama. During the interview, co-host Diane Sawyer played a minute-long clip of the movie in which Cruise's character berates a journalist for being a "windsock" to the Bush administration during the Iraq War. The clip featured Cruise haughtily complaining, "Your network led every report about the invasion of Iraq with the digital screen-sized flag to the square-jawed saluting Marine and the bald eagle soaring to Aaron Copland."

Sawyer then sycophantically begged, "Speaking as your resident windsock, what would you have us do? What would this film have us do?" Being a tough journalist, Sawyer then allowed Redford to get away with responding that when "we found out the cause behind the war was a lie, that's when I think everybody should have stood up, wakened up, and moved forward." At no point did the GMA host point out that, in regards to Iraq, Bill Clinton said the same thing about WMDs as President Bush.

As part of the publicity push for their left-wing movie Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise sat down with Time’s Richard Corliss for an article titled "The Lions Roar." But these lions have a very typical Hollywood Left message. In America, it’s very tough to speak out against war. "Standing up is very, very difficult," said Streep. "We vilify the people that do speak up. You're told you're not supporting the troops." Redford added: "If you're against us, you're not patriotic." They also say the American people don’t care so much about war as they do about celebrity dirt, and according to Streep, we face the tragedy of the unheeded peace-loving left: "we went forward, in the face of all sorts of warnings that are now proven to be the truth. Americans have been anesthetized by good fortune."

According to Robert Redford and ABC co-host Diane Sawyer, you're either a liberal activist or you are apathetic. Those are the two options. The famous left-wing actor/director appeared on Tuesday's "Good Morning America" to promote his new anti-war film, "Lions For Lambs." After playing a clip of the movie that shows Redford's character, a college professor, deriding a student for not opposing his government, Sawyer breathlessly asked the star, "You've been touring colleges. Is it true? Are they not awake out there? Are they waking up? What's the difference? What's it going to take?"

Redford, who also directed the film, asserted that "the pendulum is beginning to swing back" and repeated the cliched liberal claim that young people aren't aggressively opposing the war because "the fact that there wasn't a draft...let a lot of people off the hook and they didn't get involved." So, essentially, young people either support a liberal agenda or they simply don't care?