Roger L. Simon: Oh, Danny Boy

I have always known Danny Glover was on the left side of things and I certainly know how difficult it is to get serious films made, but taking millions from Hugo Chavez to produce movies seemed a bit much. Not surprisingly, the local Venezuelan filmmakers were peeved.

I wonder what Danny is feeling now, reading this week's news from Caracas. The whole world - even the Carter Center - is lining up against his hero Mr. Chavez.

What is it that makes people able to overlook so much? To preserve their leftist ideals people like Glover are able to ignore the likes of Castro murdering the (often very liberal) opposition, jailing artists and homosexuals and so forth. They can turn the other way as Chavez embraces Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad or closes television stations and arrests hundreds of students protesting for free speech, as he did this week. (At least he didn't throw them through the dormitory windows, as his friends in Iran did in 1999 when the "reformer" Khatami was in power.)

It's sad when talented people you admire, like Glover, do crazy things. I wonder at the source of the disconnect. I mean the deeper source - not the obvious Bush hatred or racial grievance that seems unabated in era when race-baiting now cuts both ways. I suspect that people like Glover, although they are not aware of it, are expressing a pain that goes considerably beyond issues of race or supposed social injustice to something buried in their DNA or imbued in early childhood. Why else would an essentially good man give allegiance to such an obviously ruthless horror?

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(coup leader) Vice-Admiral Victor Ram�rez P�rez, told a Venevisi�n reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

Anyway, once you *choose* to show loonytoons instead of covering the restoring to power of a legitimately elected president, you have made a joke of your ability to use the *public* airwaves responsibly. RCTV can get themselves to cable.

Meanwhile, more than 1800 people were arrested protesting during the Republican convention in NY. Over 90% of those cases ended in acquittals or the charges were dismissed. Video evidence showed that in many cases, the charges were completely made up. But, hey, it got the hippie rabble off the street, right?

Roger you're really contorting yourself to say nice things about Glover. Maybe you've been conned by his acting ability to give him credit for much more integrity than he really has. You can go back probably before Brando to find examples of ethical zeroes who have a gift of the ability to effectively present themselves as sympathetic characters.

Mogwai, regarding disconnect, are you saying that Hugo is right to to abridge free speech, because another democratically-elected gov't wrongly did so at that NYC convention?

Mogwai, your link was removed not for censorship reasons, but because it was breaking up my page. Please use short urls or embedded code. Thank you.

That's odd. I spent the entire day videotaping the RNC protest in NYC. I walked from one end of 7th ave to the other twice and don't recall seeing anyone getting arrested. The police and protesters were both very friendly and also towards each other. I remember hearing about the incident of the NYPD officer being beaten by a group of protestors, but it wasn't representive of what I saw for the most part. BTW, there was well over a million people at that rally.

It's the totalitarian impulse, Roger, among those on the hard Left. They are constantly in search of the next Great Leader, the Voice of the Masses, that will bring the one true faith of socialist utopianism to the huddled masses. Chavez is just a retreaded Fidel, Kim, Tito, Stalin, Ho and the Left's reflexive response is identical. Like the Bourbons, they forget nothing and learn nothing.

So I guess what Mogwai is saying is that President Bush would have been justified in using an executive order to shut down Err Amerika for advocation his assassination, repeatedly?

That's like the argument from this guy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2088662,00.html
a leftist who supports totalitarian Chavez because the station was supporting his overthrow. I guess 90% of US MSM would be guilty of that.

The problem is, with the issue of free speech, who gets to make that call over what is seditious and what is merely dissent? Its funny the left is constantly going on and on about how we've completely lost our rights to free speech in the suppressive atmosphere since the Patriot Act, yet there is more dissent than ever. George W. Bush is the most vilified president since Nixon, and I don't see anyone thrown in jail over it, no media outlets being shut down.

Yet they give people like Castro and Chavez a pass. Its sorta like how feminists will fight a major crusade over the right to live in a country where you don't have to be oppressed by sexist jokes in the workplace, but won't lift a voice against Islamic oppression, mutilation and murder of women.

I call bullshit on the "well over a million people at the rally." I know that when you're in a very large crowd it seems huge, but all you really have to do is use a little geometry and the pictures of the "March on Poverty" (which seems to have had half -a-million people or so) or the Million Man March (which may well have had 700,000), and something where people are actually counted (like an overhead crowd shot of the beginning of the Chicago Marathon or the Hong Kong Marathon where everybody is wearing a damn number.)

Each individual, when packed with body-to-body contact *still* takes up at least 1.75 square feet of space. If there is a 3 inch gap between bodies, it goes up to almost 3 square feet. Look at the overhead picture, check the density, measure the space, get a more realistic number.

I've been following these idiot crowd estimates by 'protesters' and 'marchers' since the late '60s, and in my experience they all overestimate crowd numbers by a factor of at least 3 and usually around 8-10.

There was a protest in the Washington, DC Oval a couple of years ago, and by superimposing a picture of the crowd there on a pic of Michigan Stadium (which holds 105,000 or so but has a measurable open space in the middle) I finally convinced someone who had been sure that there were "more than 100,000 people there" that it was physically impossible for the crown in the pic (taken at the height of the protest) had more than 30,000 and probably fewer than 25,000.

I would guess that a really good Google overhead or some such would make it possible to literally count all the heads, or at least sample and accurately estimate crowd numbers. Ever wonder why this never seems to happen? (Or why one of the biggest marches in US history, again Roe v Wade on, I believe, it's 30th anniversay) went basically uncovered by the MSM and had pretty much *no* crowd estimates?

In an Occam's Razor sort of way, the simple explanation for people like Danny Glover is that he's just really really stupid. If you just accept that as the reality, any further actions of his start to make sense.

Thanks for writing about Danny Glover's ties to the brutal thug dictator in Venezuela.

Mogwai just successfully demonstrated the classic left-wing troll method of hijacking a thread. He made a point of being the first to comment, so as to set the tone. He then morphed the thread into an off-topic criticism of the U.S.

The fact of the matter is that the greedy oligarchs of Mexico, Central and South America create the Chavez's of this world.

Any time someone is bold enough stick it to them, the left will automatically come to their side....period.

Unfortunately, the day that lefty idealists can stick it to the corrupt oligrachs without the accompanying human rights abuses, authoritarian impulses and their own greedy, self serving ways seems to be a thing they haven't been able to figure out.

In the meantime, when the US finally figures out a way to slam the door on the poor of Mexico, the Mexican goobermint is headed for the same fate.

Unfortunately, I think we'll see more Chavez-type "great leaders" now that he's re-established that you can use ballots to hijack a poorly functioning but otherwise democratic country. After this, you move quickly and change the system so that you're effectively president-for-life. In fact, by doing so, you'll have a multi-year honeymoon as a "decisive" leader. And if you make the right noises about helping the poor, etc, and choose the right enemies, the world left will support you, with the added bonus that you're a "democrat" because you initially pulled off your coup by using the ballot.

Not that this is such a wonderful thing: after all, the first guy to do this was ol' Adolf himself.

No surprise. No doubt he has suffered injustice and racism. Being born and raised in SF, his anger at those injustices has been egged on until it has become a firestorm. Nuff said.

Fighting the Chavez-types is like playing a 'whack-a-mole' game: there are always people who want to force other people to do their bidding.

Which is why the US Constitution is so precious for human freedom. It has enough conflict of interest built in it, so that one totalitarian is usually cancelled out by another totalitarian.

And remember: good ol' Jimmeh Carter and his Carter Center, supported the (probably fraudulent) election that Chavez won. By doing so, he legitimized Chavez to the American people. Jimmeh just LOVES (anti American) dictators.

Jimmeh's done a lot better job of getting even with USA for rejecting him in 1980, than he ever did of thanking USA for electing him in 1976. Sending him to monitor an election is a GREAT deal for whomever the anti-American candidate is.

Danny Glover is not essentially a good man. He's a raging hypocrite and a supporter of totalitarians. He is, in short, a Liberal.

"He's a raging hypocrite and a supporter of totalitarians. He is, in short, a Liberal."

Stop abusing the language. Call a socialist a socialist for they are profoundly illiberal. Maggie Thatcher and Frederic Hayek are/were 'liberals' (small L). Reclaim the language.

You are right, Perry de Havilland, not to call Glover a liberal. He is not in any sense. He is not, strictly speaking, a socialist either. He is more of an "as if" socialist. Someone who affects socialist attitudes while living as a capitalist - rather like Castro in that regard.

The fundamental divide between left and right has always been how one viewed the relationhip between financial and human "Capital".

This has always been contentious in Hollywood...where the "star" was the reason people would see a movie...the realities of blockbuster film making is that the need for a large infrastructure to film the movie meant the "studio", I.E. financial capital would recieve the lions share of the profit.

Performing artists have always resented the "cut" those who provide the facilities take.

This is also why journalism tends to lean left...prior to the internet..if one wanted to be a journalist...one needed to own a printing press...which is a fairly expensive item.

One will find that "lefty" politics is prevalent in capital intensive industries.

I think the behavior of Glover et al is best explained by assuming that they simply do not care about the outcome for the peoples of places like Venezuela.

For most Leftist, the real people in the world are just stage props in the Leftist own little social-political psycho-drama. They "care" about them only to the extent that their suffering can be exploited in the context of our own internal social and political squabbles. Leftist choose their positions on such issue based on their own self-interest. When they can no longer exploit the plight of the poor and oppressed they forget them.

You can see such actions very clearly in recent history in the cases of Indochina, South Africa, Nicaragua etc. Once the plight of an area ceases to have internal political ramifications they drop it like a hot potato.

I think it is time to stop looking at most Leftist as bumbling but well meaning and instead see them for the dangerous narcissist that they are.

The major difference in philosophy is that we on the right value freedom greater than equality(of condition) and those on the left,the opposite. The history of mankind confirms my observation that those that placed a higher value on freedom/liberty have done a greater job in promoting equality than the totalitarians, large and small("we're in this together").

Case in point, Venezuelan standards of living under Hugo are in a tailspin. If hurting the oligarchs is worth also hurting the little folks (who before Hugo were seeing steady improvements in the measurements), then Hugo has a case. He must not really think he has a case, though, since he is blaming the VRWC for his "troubles". If hurting the private sector is good enough, then what's the problem? Especially now that he can change (AKA "dump") the Constitution anytime he so dictates. His 60% in the last election says so, says he.

June 1, 2007: Oh, Danny Boy

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