Sheesh!
Talk about hyper hypocrisy! Today on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough slammed Quentin Taratino as a "pornographer of violence." Too bad Joe didn't have even a small fraction of such moral outrage yesterday when he and the Morning Joe crew allowed Robert Redford to ramble on and on promoting his new movie "The Company You Keep" which glorified Weathermen murderers.
Watch the video below the fold but the viewer will wonder at what point in Redford's long spiel that Scarborough or anyone else on his show challenges Redford on the fact that his movie gives sympathetic treatment to the murderers loosely based on the 1981 Brinks robbery by radicals who had previously been involved in Weathermen bombings. That robbery resulted in the murder of two police officers and a security guard. However, not a word of protest on Morning Joe about Redford being a "pornographer of violence" even those his movie gave a sympathetic portrayal of the killers.
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Here is Redford allowed to uncritically compare the poor widdle Weathermen killers in his movie to the prey of "Les Miserables":
For me the themes that have interested me are the hunter and the hunted. The predator and the prey. Those are themes that are in a lot of the things I have done. That's here now because it is legitimized versus people that went underground and had to assume another name to stay free. What are the consequences 30 years later of that? What is it like living without your name? In a way it bears resemblance to "Les Miserables."
Sniff! Oh the injustice! Weather Underground radicals forced to change their names because they killed innocent people. As for the comparison by Redford of his movie theme to "Les Miserables," Jonathan Tobin of Commentary Magazine made this apt observation:
If Redford believes the impulse to bomb buildings and commit murders in the name of changing “Amerika” is really the moral equivalent of Jean Valjean’s crime of stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child then his moral compass is profoundly out of order.
There was not a peep of criticism about the movie as the Morning Joe crew fawned over Redford. However, here is an excellent analysis of Redford's paean to radical born killers from Michelle Malkin in the New York Post:
The plot centers on a 1970s Michigan bank robbery perpetrated by fictional Weather Underground members Sharon Solarz (portrayed by Democratic activist Susan Sarandon) and Jim Grant (played by Redford). The group shoots and kills an off-duty cop working as a bank security guard. Grant goes on the lam and assumes a fake identity; decades later, a reporter launches an investigation into his role in the crime. The movie drums up “unabashedly heartfelt” sympathy for Grant as he works to exonerate himself.
Moviegoers would be better served by educating themselves about the real-life bank robbery and murder on which the movie is loosely based. In 1981, rich-kid Weathermen ideologues and lovers Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert joined forces with Black Liberation Army thugs and other ragtag commie revolutionaries to hold up an armored Brink’s vehicle in Nyack, NY. Their In 1981, rich-kid Weathermen ideologues and lovers Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert joined forces with Black Libe booty: $1.6 million to fund their violent activities. Before taking up her assignment as the getaway vehicle driver, Boudin dropped off her toddler son, Chesa Boudin, at a babysitter’s house.
Two of the victims gunned down in the botched Brink’s robbery were police officers; one, a private security guard. All were veterans from working-class backgrounds. Their names: Waverly Brown, Edward O’Grady and Peter Paige.
Meanwhile the leftwing sympathy for the Weather Underground killers isn't limited to just Redford's flick. Boudin, who has been released from prison, has been rewarded for her bloody radicalism with a professorship gig at Columbia University. Will she also be appearing on Morning Joe for the fawn treatment?
