CNS: Celebrity testimony is an age-old political stunt on Capitol Hill. If you want the press at your hearing, you lunge at the chance to have a star athlete, or a famous singer or actor, bring some zing to your issue.
Democrats do this better because they have a lot more friends in Hollywood and they’re always more willing to push the envelope with silliness. When you want to push your agenda on agriculture to the left and you need attention, you get Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek to testify. Their credentials? They all starred in movies about agriculture.
Another example of this happened on Nov. 19 when the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on environment, chaired by Rep. Harley Rouda, D-Calif., called upon the Bernie Sanders-backing actor Mark Ruffalo to testify on perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, or “PFAS.”
These chemicals are used for many everyday uses. “(T)hey keep food from sticking to cookware, make clothes and carpets resistant to stains, and create firefighting foam,” the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports. But these chemicals have leached into soil and water and air, and they show up in the bloodstream. So there’s a real policy debate there.
But Ruffalo doesn’t have a college degree in chemistry. He doesn’t have a college degree in anything. He has only played scientist Dr. Bruce Banner (“The Hulk”) in the “Avengers” movies.
At least those actresses were honored in the ’80s as experts for movies that had already come and gone in theatres. Ruffalo is starring in a movie about evil chemical companies called “Dark Waters,” which opens in limited release three days after his star appearance on the Hill. Distributed by NBCUniversal’s Focus Features brand, it’s based on the real-life lawsuits against DuPont by an activist lawyer named Rob Bilott.
Rep. Fred Keller of Pennsylvania underlined this stunt. “The majority has called as their star witness an actor. That’s right, an actor,” he said. “An actor with no medical, no scientific or research expertise except for a few scenes as Dr. Bruce Banner. An actor that has a record of anti-business activism. More importantly to Mr. Ruffalo … an actor with a movie premiering this week that attacks private-sector job creators with loose facts and hyped-up emotional rhetoric.” read more
Unfortunately a good percentage of our fellow
Americans get all their scientific facts and
all news/opinions from Hollywood.Scary ain’t it ?
When Allie Beth Stuckey testified on Capitol Hill regarding abortion, and was quite medically/scientifically detailed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz put her down as not a doctor. The chair gave Allie Beth a chance to respond which was quite nice for 10 seconds – until DWS reclaimed her time because you can’t allow dissent to be heard.
Point being that you can have some quite educated people who ‘don’t have the right credentials’. But naturally the actors the Left is putting in front of the mic are just spewing rhetoric.
Let’s not forget the obnoxious piece of crap ‘children’ brought on board to lecture us about how ‘stupid’ we are being about….whatever.
For my money, the leftists are all children…of the corn.
Kim Kardashian is another expert witness- on crime. Didn’t Will and Grace testify about queerness? Hollywood is a bastion of scientific experts.
Actors make their living pretending to be someone else.
Always keep that in mind.
Take a crabby old High School Chemistry teacher to question him.
Destroy his ass in a tenth grade fashion
So anything he claims to have come up with, himself, is mathematically more likely to be true than what ever else has been shot out of the hearing glitter cannons.
The problem being…?
Well, since it is the ‘Citizen’s government’ (tongue firmly planted in my cheek) I think we ‘average’ citizens should demand EQUAL TIME to testify before these committees as these pin head uber ego equipped hollyweird stars do. I cannot see where they have more rights to testify that we do……
Just because you can PRETEND to be someone smart does not mean you are smart nor does it give you specific insights about what Americans want or need.
Most of Hollywood is so busy patting themselves on the back for being professional pretenders they miss out on reality. No self awareness either.
Was I was a kid I loved wacthing Quincy. One episode was about “orphan drugs”, about a week later Iwas wacthing News and saw Jack Klugman testing before Congress, about orphan drugs. HE ACTUALLY READ FROM THE SCRIPT. I REMEMBER THINKING WTF? One of my first red pill moments even though the term hadn’t been invented yet.
Some actress once got a “feminist” award for her portrayal of some obscure woman who may have done something.
These magically mysterious (some may say “bullshit”) phenomena occur way outside of Hollyweird. Wasn’t the Alar scam brought to us by some maggot in Hollyweird?
The Globaloney Warming Scam (Climate Change Scam) is largely pursued by Hollyweird – they’re too ignorant and alcohol and/or drug-addled to formulate opinions based on some groups of facts.
In fact, I’d be willing to bet – say 1000 iOTW dollars – that fewer than 20 Hollyweird maggots in the History of Hollyweird have ever read a PhD Thesis.
Or a peer-reviewed Physics paper.
izlamo delenda est …
Actors suck, literally and figuratively.
When did marionettes start believing in themselves to be true? I think that must have been when TV and a microphone first came on the stage. These people have willfully been used and enjoy it. Shut up and dance, sing, or spin some plates, whatever you do and somebody might think you’re smart.
They have ruined my view of movies.
@Tim
You are thinking of whacked-up Meryl Streep with the Alar scare.
Hey Mark Ruffalo (et al): if you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?
Enough of us fully distrust the democat/media/Hollywood idiot cabal, so that Hollywood idiots appearing in congress does the left more damage than good..
@Anonymous November 24, 2019 at 1:12 pm
> Enough of us fully distrust the democat/media/Hollywood idiot cabal
Were that, even remotely, even possibly, true…
> Hollywood idiots appearing in congress
… would be physically impossible.
Yet. It exists. Which means… what?
I wonder why they never call on me to testify as I play a brilliant and insightful scientist on the internet!
@Big bang farts and facts November 24, 2019 at 2:46 pm
> I wonder why they never call on me to testify as I play a brilliant and insightful scientist on the internet!
Could it be, because those that convincingly play the “brilliant and insightful” never “recall” anything? When asked by “cops”?