Who do you blame for the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade? I’d start my list with the five assholes on the Supreme Court who plan to make it happen. Their names are: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Then, moving down the list, you’ve got Donald Trump, who appointed those last three dipshits while president.
After that, maybe Sen. Mitch McConnell, who blocked Barack Obama’s last SCOTUS pick, Merrick Garland, an advocate of abortion rights. But the end of Roe has been a long-term project of the Republican party as a whole, so give them all credit — including the dullards who helped while pretending not to. Finally, you have the Democrats, largely unwilling to campaign on a position held by a majority of Americans, let alone codify it as law. Am I missing anyone?
Oh, right. Susan Sarandon. How could I forget!
Sarandon, an actress who has delighted audiences in films as varied as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bull Durham, Thelma & Louise and Dead Man Walking, lives rent-free in the heads of centrist liberals convinced that she bears responsibility for each new political crisis since 2016. It’s an astonishing choice of scapegoat: a woman with progressive views and a long track record of activism addressing world hunger, mass incarceration and senseless wars. She was arrested in 2018 for protesting Trump’s cruel policy of migrant separation, hardly the norm for public figures disgusted by the regime. Yet we see that elected members of Congress — you know, the people whose job it is to govern — can’t resist beefing with the outspoken star. In the process, they always reveal themselves to be exactly as ineffective as she claims.
Sarandon’s unforgivable sin, as establishment Dems and #Resistance types see it, was to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries, and then Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election. That’s it. Needless to say, Sarandon’s single vote for Stein in the state of New York — where Hillary Clinton easily won — did not get Trump elected. Even if you attribute literally every Stein vote nationwide to Sarandon’s influence, the math does not support the conclusion that these women together cost Clinton the presidency.
And it’s wild that this has to be said when the true engineers of that defeat can be found wherever you look: Democratic elites who ensured that Clinton was the party frontrunner while effectively blocking an incumbent vice president from seeking the nomination. A media sickly fascinated with Trump, eager to indulge in spectacle. The campaign team that wanted to face him — but never figured out how to beat the guy. Hell, Sarandon’s haters seem to despise her more than they do the millions of Trump voters. Maybe it’s because she has strong principles.
Future historians are going to struggle with this. Why, when a handful of creeps in robes decided to roll back privacy and autonomy for American women, did a purportedly liberal faction train their fury on a well-known woman encouraging them to stop making excuses and start fighting back? Here’s what I’d tell them: It’s more or less tradition for moderates to punch left when the far right is making gains — that’s how they keep their power consolidated. You can’t hold moral authority or political capital when people notice that you have no plan, no solidarity in the just cause and no instinct besides self-preservation through neutrality. It’s simply too pathetic.
That Sarandon emerged as a prime target, however, is a sign of deeply personal acrimony. She flips a rage switch because she’s supposed to be one of them. A glamorous, white, fundraiser-attending, bleeding-heart 75-year-old Hollywood icon still knocking ’em dead on the red carpet. How dare she deny Hillary, or any mealy-mouthed Democrat, the uncritical devotion that is meant to follow from that identity? She owes them, but instead she holds them to account, as if they can be expected to represent the will of their constituents. How absurd! She ought to be posting blue wave emojis and the word VOTE a few hundred times a day like a good concerned wine mom, not marching in the streets for civil rights and labor unions. These cretins honestly believe that an “In This House” yard sign does more to uphold democracy than free speech itself. They can’t stand that while their leaders dither and surrender, she never yields.
“Well-behaved women seldom make history,” they quote, when not saying, “Shut up, lady.”
Indeed, they feel, why have celebrities at all if they’re going to act like Susan Sarandon, this uppity bitch who refuses to know her place? Many of us, meanwhile, thank her for scorning the platitudes and compromise that would see her accepted in those craven circles. If she is a thorn in their side, they have done everything to deserve it. Heal thyself or sit there and bleed out.
Miles Klee
Miles Klee is MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert. He’s also the author of the novel ‘Ivyland’ and a story collection, ‘True False.’
