Ed Asner’s ‘Occupy’ Attack on the Rich

Like other notable entertainment biz hypocrites such as race-baiter Russell Simmons, rapper Kanye “Bush doesn’t care about black people” West, and documentary propagandist Michael Moore, actor/activist Ed Asner threw in his lot with the anarchic Occupy Wall Street movement, supplying the narration for a cartoon condemning wealthy Americans for not paying their “fair share” of taxes.

Asner, 83, former gruff-but-lovable TV star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant, and now gruff-and-hateful self-admitted socialist, narrated a nearly eight-minute video created and posted online last week by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) called Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale. The site’s brief description of the plot includes the ludicrous claim that “Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore.”

You have to see this outrageous and amateurishly animated video to believe just how blatant and exaggerated is its class warfare propaganda. It’s shot through with the Occupy movement’s language about the decent 99 percent versus the insanely greedy 1 percent. It asserts that the heartless rich (all white men, of course, as opposed to the diverse commoners) became wealthy through tax loopholes, tax cuts and tax evasion; they are blamed for causing the decline of public services and crashing the economy, for buying politicians and suppressing votes, and for controlling the media which then hypnotizes the people into believing there is no alternative to capitalism. The rich are then depicted blaming the poor, public servants and teachers for the economic collapse of society.

As the video hit the internet, conservatives denounced its hypocrisy and its caricature of the wealthy. GatewayPundit.com warned that the video “could be playing in your child’s classroom as we speak” and noted that “it was written by CFT staffer Fred Glass (2011 compensation: $139,800) and narrated by proud leftist actor (and 1 percenter) Ed Asner.” Fox News’ Sean Hannity played clips from the video on his show for his guests. Conservative Tucker Carlson said, “There’s really no overstating how dumb this is. The idea that there are any California teachers currently in classrooms in charge of children who agree with that, is horrifying.” Hannity’s Democrat guest Kirsten Powers acknowledged, “It was pretty bad. I have to say, even I found it offensive. It was too much demonizing for my taste.”

As long as Asner is demonizing rich white men, let’s look at this rich white man’s own résumé in leftist political activism, which began when he led a 1980 strike by the Screen Actors' Guild, an organization he would later head twice as President. He was a vocal critic of the Reagan administration, condemning our involvement in Central America and participating in a fundraiser to aid guerrillas fighting against the Reagan-backed government in El Salvador. He also lent his name to a rebel-supporting direct-mail piece.

For his efforts on behalf of the progressive agenda, he has received the ACLU's Worker's Rights Committee Award, the Anne Frank Human Rights Award, the Eugene Debs Award, the Organized Labor Publications Humanitarian Award, and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Award.

Asner and his wife have contributed financially to a number of Democratic political campaigns and progressive organizations, including MoveOn.org. As a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) he has said: “Socialist means a thing that will curb the excesses of capitalism: the increasing wealth of the rich and decreasing wealth of the poor… For me, solidarity, civil liberty, and social justice can all be summed up with three simple letters – DSA.”

Predictably an advocate of gun control and opponent of the death penalty, Asner testified as a character witness for accused cop killer Kenneth Gay and has spoken out publicly on numerous occasions protesting the death sentence of the celebrity set’s favorite cop-killer, Mumia Abu Jamal. Asner was also a member of the International Committee to Free Geronimo Pratt of the vile Black Panther Party, arrested in 1970 for murdering a Los Angeles schoolteacher.

In addition to lending his support to murderers, the actor avidly cheers the celebrity set’s favorite murdering dictator Fidel Castro and cluelessly blames the U.S. for pushing him into the sphere of Soviet influence. He claimed that Castro has been forced into “excesses” because of Cuba being “constantly embargoed by the United States.” Poor misunderstood Castro.

An unsurprising critic of the Bush administration, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and American foreign policy in general, Asner has advocated for the 9-11 Visibility Project, which promotes the idea that our government knew the terrorist attacks were coming and did nothing to stop them, and he has stated that “9-11 has been used to justify 'endless war' and a continual rollback in civil liberties that seems to have no end in sight.” He has said that George Bush “is making us an imperialist government.” Parroting the irrational, fact-free, race-obsessed mindset of his progressive brethren, Asner added, “that there is a strong streak of racism whenever we engage in foreign adventures. Our whole history in regime change has been of people of different color.” Perhaps he thinks we should be deposing the dangerous dictators of Norway or Canada instead.

Speaking of regime change, Asner was a signatory to the 2002 Not In Our Name petition organized by the Revolutionary Communist Party, which calls for the overthrow of the U.S. government and its replacement with a Communist dictatorship.

Yes, how much better off Americans would be if we did away with rich businessmen (but only the white males, not the Oprahs or the Russell Simmonses) and embraced the likes of angry socialist Ed Asner, Fidel Castro, 9/11 truthers, the Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the Occupy movement. What a fairy-tale ending that would be for America.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 12/11/12)