Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
What the printing press was to Johannes Gutenberg and the radio to FDR, Twitter is to Trump-hating celebrities who take time between their kale enemas to embarrass themselves on the internet.
The #Resistance Twitter celebrity is invariably a has-been. The perfect example is Kathy Griffin who went from starring on Suddenly Susan, the rare example of a terrible sitcom that actually killed someone, to starring in My Life on the D-List to trying to molest Anderson Cooper on CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live.
Her last gasp of fame was a photoshoot of her holding up Trump’s fake, severed bloody head, followed by a tearful press conference trying to milk the backlash against her publicity stunt for more publicity.
Scientists have determined that a former celebrity’s Trump rage level is inversely proportional to the odds of her having a speaking part in a movie that is released in theaters outside North Korea.
It used to be alcoholism, then drugs and celebrity rehab. But these days the very bottom of the celeb dumpster is the #Resistance Twitter account. When celebrity #Resistance twits have an option that doesn’t involve screeching ALL CAPS Russia conspiracies, even though they think Vladivostok is the name of their former yoga coach, they take it faster than you can say, “Keith Olbermann.”
Olbermann resurrected his unhinged MSNBC act (which later became his unhinged Current TV act) for GQ’s anti-Trump vlogging. Then The Resistance host declared that Trump was defeated and managed to get back in at ESPN, which is still less degrading than squealing about Trump to 16,000 YouTube viewers.
All of whom wanted him to have Louise Mensch on to explain how the Russians put chips in their heads.
The decline of a celebrity can be measured by their anti-Trump hysteria. Sarah Silverman was lucky enough to build a career on nothing more than saying vile things in a cutesy voice. After twenty years the audience got tired of her shtick, and Sarah began sliding down the chute into the #Resistance.
First came the nude scenes, then an attempt to crowd into the already glutted market of Jon Stewart clones (British Jon Stewart, female Jon Stewart, black Jon Stewart, illiterate Jon Stewart) with I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman. The only time anyone watched was when Silverman tried to defend Louis C.K. and his abusive behavior with women. Silverman was quite familiar with her old friend’s behavior and had been complicit in it. And had failed to warn the female comedians who fell victim to it.
Then Silverman went on to expand her progressive sexual predator advocacy by defending former Senator Al Franken. “I believe in my heart of heart of hearts he never copped a feel.”
That’s funnier than any of the jokes she ever told on purpose.
Is it any wonder that Sarah Silverman would rather rant about Trump on Twitter than address her complicity in the abusive behavior of her male lefty celeb pals? Or figure out what to do when her career goes the way of Kathy Griffin’s and all that’s left is drunkenly groping a sheepish gay man on CNN.
Sometimes ranting about Trump can lead to a temporary career boost. But there’s a reason that #Resistance celebs end up in the dumpster. And they quickly find their way back there.
Alec Baldwin managed another career rebound in between assaulting random people in New York by doing a bad imitation of Trump, as imagined by a small child from Thailand who had never seen Trump.
Then he was once again arrested for allegedly punching a man on Manhattan’s 10th Street. And The Alec Baldwin Show (a production that no one except Alec Baldwin, his mother and his lawyer knew existed) was replaced by reruns of Shark Tank and The Sound of Music. Appropriate since, aside from raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, getting into angry altercations is one of Alec’s few favorite things.
#Resistance celebhood is often the result of a personal problem that prevents you from functioning in normal society. Like Rosie O’Donnell’s depression, PTSD, OCD and anxiety which can only be treated with illegal donations to lefty candidates on ActBlue.
Or Baldwin’s severe untreatable case of being Alec Baldwin.
Chelsea Handler has her alcoholism. Like Sarah Silverman, she played that one gag of a woman behaving badly until it bombed. Her Netflix talk show, Chelsea, was watched by an audience of dozens, but that’s a shame because Americans missed her sobbing post-election interview with Senator Barbara Boxer. It was the only time she was funny. Even if the only time Chelasea could be funny is unintentionally.
After its cancellation, Handler announced that she was going to focus on activism. And then decided to blame Trump for binge drinking in America.
Much like Barbara Streisand blaming Trump for her appetite for pancakes, being a #Resistance celeb means projecting all of your foibles, flaws and failures onto the Great Satan in the White House.
Some #Resistance celebs have tried and failed to transition from their careers angrily tweeting about Trump in the Hollywood Hills to actually finding gainful employment in Washington D.C.
If you define ‘gainful’ in the loosest possible sense.
Ashley Judd’s Kentucky Senate bid was derailed by her “psychological support dog”. Judd claimed that Trump’s victory was “the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my lifetime”, and delivered an unhinged Women’s March rant, declaring, “I am nasty like the blood stains on my bed sheets.”
Also like her career which consists mostly of appearances on TV shows that no one watches.
Melissa Gilbert had to drop out of running for Congress in Michigan, according to her, because, “my doctors said there’s no way for me to continue to deal with the incredibly rigorous demands of a congressional campaign without continuing to do harm to my body.”
Or it might have been the $360,000 in unpaid taxes, which she blamed on a stalled acting career.
It’s okay if you don’t recognize her name. The last time you saw her in anything was 1983.
The #Resistance carries with it the stench of patchouli and failure. The members of its celebrity charter club have tried everything else. They may have abused all the substances that there are. They might be suffering from mental illness, poor anger management or just from being themselves.
At their peak, they may have been stars. But instead of giving off heat, they absorbed it. Their vanity fed off compliments and they based their sense of self-worth on the mask looking back at them from the mirror. And when the day came that no one called, that tourists stopped asking them for photos and the offers became more degrading, and then trickled away entirely, their egos began to starve.
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” Robert Frost wrote.
But #Resistance celebs often have no homes. They have mansions plagued by IRS liens. They have investment properties and ex-husbands and ex-wives they owe alimony to. But they have no home.
When the sun of their ego sets, the only home they have left is radical lefty politics.
Media and social media are full of #Resistance celebs competing for attention. Their antics are as pathetic as they are desperate. Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler, Alec Baldwin and Sarah Silverman at least got some attention. Spare a pathetic tear for the failures. Weep for Pauly Shore, perpetually auditioning to play Stephen Miller on Saturday Night Live. There’s a joke in the guy from Biodome pinning his hopes for a comeback on his very faint resemblance to a Trump adviser. It’s just not a joke that SNL would ever touch.
It would be too funny.
The joke is a lot funnier than anything that ever came out of Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman or Alec Baldwin’s mouths. #Resistance celebrity is the pathetic last gasp of the talentless celeb whose looks have faded, whose gimmick has bombed and whose need for validation has only grown.
They desperately envy Trump’s fame. They hunger for his headlines and publicity. It reminds them of those days when they were famous and reporters hung on their every stupid word.
They don’t hate Trump. They hate themselves.
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Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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