For the longest time, actress Susan Sarandon has been somewhat of a pillar to the left, an advocate for extreme leftist policies, and the right absolutely hated her. But since the 2016 election, it’s not the right that she’s feeling the heat from. No. Over a year later she’s feeling the heat from the liberal left because she didn’t vote the way she was “supposed” to vote -- in support of Hillary Clinton.
Instead, Sarandon stuck to her druthers and voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, because Bernie Sanders – the socialist who she campaigned long and hard for, didn’t win the Democrat nomination, thanks in part to the DNC. A year later, she has no regrets.
In an interview, the feisty actress told Emma Brockes of The Guardian (U.K.) she’s “not attacked from the right at all,” instead, she’s attacked by the left for “not checking her white privilege, of throwing away her vote on a third-party candidate (the Green party nominee, Jill Stein) during the US presidential election, and of recklessly espousing a political cause that let Trump in through the backdoor.”
But what really burns her detractors is that she won’t admit her error.
Talking about feminism, Sarandon said for a long time, women wanted to be disassociated with the word because it was represented by an image of a “shrill woman” which, she says, came back with a vengeance during the 2016 election: “It’s come back, and it’s gotten warped, especially with the election, where if you’re a woman you have to support Hillary Clinton.”
Sarandon was once supported Clinton, back in 2001, until Clinton voted for the Iraq war, but since the last election she’s gotten so much hate from the left she had to get her number changed because she would get vile messages such as ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed’, ‘I hope you’re raped’. Misogynistic attacks.
I ask if she’s aware that Katha Pollitt recently called her an idiot in the New York Review of Books and she looks momentarily taken aback. “I’m flattered,” she says. These people are furious with you, I say.
“Well, that’s why we’re going to lose again if we depend on the DNC [the Democratic National Committee]. Because the amount of denial ... I mean it’s very flattering to think that I, on my own, cost the election. That my little voice was the deciding factor.”
Is it upsetting to be attacked?
“It’s upsetting to me more from the point of view of thinking they haven’t learned. I don’t need to be vindicated.”
When asked if she advocated for Jill Stein, the candidate who got Sarandon’s vote, she said she “didn’t advocate people voting for anything” and contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a “protest” vote:
“I said get your information, I’m going to vote for change, because I was hoping that Stein was going to get whatever percentage she needed – but I knew she wasn’t going to make the difference in the election…It wasn’t a protest vote. Following Bernie wasn’t a protest.”
When gay friends of Sarandon said they felt sorry for Clinton, she told them ‘She’s not authentic. She’s been terrible to gay people for the longest time. She’s an opportunist.’ And then I’m like: ‘OK, let’s not talk about it anymore.’
When asked if she did say that Clinton was more dangerous than Trump, Sarandon said “Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote...I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice. He deported more people than have been deported now. How he got the Nobel Peace Prize I don’t know. I think it was very important to have a black family in the White House and I think some of the stuff he did was good. He tried really hard about healthcare. But he didn’t go all the way because of Big Pharma.”
