In Turin, Italy, for the Torino Film Festival, actors Sharon Stone and Alec Baldwin showed us precisely why we hate Hollywood. We’ll start with Stone who blamed President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on “Americans who don’t travel, who 80% don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naivete.”
The “Basic Instinct” star spoke at a press event on the sidelines of the festival. She was asked to comment on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women which fell on Monday. Stone, who is clearly still reeling from Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss, responded with a tirade about politics and fascism.
Sounding quite a bit like Jane Fonda, either by design or for no reason at all, Stone began by saying, “We have to stop and think about who we choose for government. And if, in fact, we are actually choosing our government or if the government is choosing itself.”
You know, Italy has seen fascism. Italy has seen these things. You guys, you understand what happens. You have seen this before.
My country is in the midst of adolescence. Adolescence is very arrogant. Adolescence thinks it knows everything. Adolescence is naïve and ignorant and arrogant. And we are in our ignorant, arrogant adolescence.
We haven’t seen this before in our country. So Americans who don’t travel, who 80 percent don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naivete.
What I can say is that the only way that we can help with these issues, is to help each other.
…
Good men must help good men. And those good men must be very aware that a lot of your friends are not good men.
We can’t continue to pretend that your friends are good men when they’re not good men.
And you must be very clear minded and understand that your friends who are not good men are dangerous, violent men, and you have to keep them away from your daughters and your wives and your girlfriends.
Because this is a time we can no longer look away when bad men are bad.
Even by Hollywood’s lofty standards, Stone’s comments—delivered with an air of imperiousness—exhibited an astonishing degree of disdain for her fellow Americans. Unsurprisingly, the backlash was swift and intense.
Alec Baldwin was also in Turin for the film festival. And his comments were equally as presumptuous, condescending and offensive as Stone’s. Baldwin told the group, “There is a gap, if you will, in information for Americans.” But not to worry, he said, because “that vacuum is filled by the film industry.” Heaven help us.
Here are some excerpts from Baldwin’s remarks:
Americans are very uninformed about reality — what’s really going on. With climate change, Ukraine, Israel … you name it. All the biggest topics in the world, Americans have an appetite for a little bit of information.That vacuum is filled by the film industry. Not just the independent film industry, not just the documentary film industry, which are very important around the world. But by narrative films, as well where the filmmakers and the buyers, the studios and the networks and the streamers are willing to go that way.I think right now is probably one of the most significant times in our history. Since film began, since the film experience began, it became an art form. It became a business, a huge business. Now is probably one of the most important times in our history for us to make films that will teach people what reality is around the world.
I hate to break it to Baldwin, but none of us need or want out-of-touch Hollywood elites lecturing us on “what reality is around the world.”
We look to Hollywood for entertainment. That’s all. The golden age of Hollywood is long gone. There are now too many “celebrities” to count, let alone idolize.
We don’t look to Hollywood stars to tell us what’s best for America or who we should vote for. Living in their progressive echo chamber, they are the very last people we should listen to when it comes to politics. In fact, most of us wish they would stay in their lane and shut up.
Renowned economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell once asked, “Why do actors — people whose main talent is faking emotions — think that their opinions should be directing the course of political events in the real world? Yet it is a mistake that they have been making as far back as John Wilkes Booth.”
Enough said.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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