Guess what tycoon is Occupy Wall Street’s most vocal supporter and fervently in attendance at its events, eagerly addressing the crowds and speaking to the media on its behalf? Yes, Russell Simmons, a.k.a. Uncle Rush, the hip-hop mogul with uber-cool credentials and author of SuperRich: The Guide to Having it All (yes, you read that title correctly, and no, it is not by The Donald). Thanks in large part to his founding the wildly successful Def Jam record label and Phat Farm clothing line, Simmons’ net worth exceeds a whopping $300 million. A true American success story!

Hang on, though.

The Occupy movement is, first and foremost, about income inequality and the so-called “need” for wealth redistribution, as evidenced by its “we are the 99%” slogan and its angrily protesting outside notable 1%ers’ homes. So, what is a rollin’-in-cash 1%er doing at an Occupy rally? Need I even type out the phrase “inherent contradiction”?  Reading about Russell and his “support” for Occupy, I had one of my Mugatu breakdown moments (i.e., “Doesn’t anyone notice this?! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!!!”).

So just how does Uncle Rush reconcile his 1% membership with his support for Occupy? By re-framing what the movement is about, of course! Whether speaking to CNN reporters at Zuccotti park or on Keith Olbermann’s show (remember Olbermann?), Simmons takes the liberty of reinventing Occupy’s main goal:  “It’s very simple – they’re at Wall Street ’cause Wall Street runs our government and they’d like to.”  Hmm, not exactly, Russell.  They’re at Wall Street because they’re targeting the 1%, and what better concentration of the 1% is there than in the nation’s financial hub? The “movement” is, again, about income inequality – the inequality of which Simmons is a perfect poster boy. Yet Simmons recouches the aims to suit his own participation. I can almost see the Occupy protester in his beanie hat, standing behind Russell while he’s talking to CNN, going: “Pssst, dude – hm, thanks for being here ’n all but we’re actually, like, more about the 1%’s greed,” only to have Russell smile and dismiss him as yet another avid fan trying to get an autograph. Indeed, throughout Simmons’s October interview with Olbermann, Simmons never once cites Occupy’s “we are the 99%” slogan! Why? Because Simmons is in that very 1 %… but why should such inconvenient truths interfere with the chance for some good P.R.?

When the French Revolution took place (and I’m fairly certain some Occupiers would love to see us go that route), no aristocrat had the chutzpah to come out of his manor and say: “Pay no attention to my luxurious abode! I’m totally with you guys!” They put down the flaming torches and pitchforks only to tear his limbs apart before he could even get a word out. The fact that Simmons gets a free pass by Occupy and its supporters says a great deal about our tolerance for Hollyweird and other celebrity liberals’ hypocrisy, who fly on private jets whilst proclaiming themselves environmentalists, who rake in millions yet claim to be “down with the little people,” etc. At least back in ole France, the 1%ers knew one cannot have one’s cake and eat it, too (though tell that to Michelle-Antoinette who refused to cancel her Hawaii vacay and save us taxpayers $4 million). While I realize it’s uber fashionable, Russell, you simply cannot kick it in Zuccotti Park with the Occupiers when you’re worth 9 figures, sorry.

Worse yet, for all his attacks on Wall Street, Russell is no foe of the banking world. Rivaling the “are you kidding me?” shock-value of king-of-the-libs Alec Baldwin’s Capital One Card commercials, Simmons hustles his very own pre-paid debit card, “Rush Card.” But it’s not something Russell discusses publicly much nowadays – indeed, his Wikipedia bio, curiously enough, omits any mention of Rush Card. As reported in July, the Florida Attorney General’s Office is investigating Rush Card for charging hidden fees. Uh oh. Let’s examine this:  liberals love to shriek that the 2008 economic collapse was caused by “predatory lending” (in reality, it was caused by liberal social engineering – sideye to Barney Frank! — pressuring banks to make subprime loans to under-qualified minorities so they could realize the “home ownership dream”… but let’s go with the liberal view of the “evil banks” and “predatory lending” for argument’s sake). Yet here we have Russell Simmons speaking at an Occupy rally while profiting off a questionable pre-paid card targeted at African-Americans? Crazy pills moment indeed!

On Christmas Eve, the New York Post’s gossip column, Page Six, reported on the inherent hypocrisy with a quick piece entitled:  “Occupy Saint Barths,” noting Simmons’ ritzy vacation and implying it seems at odds with his support for Occupy. Only hours later, Uncle Rush’s sweet vacation was interrupted by at least one Tweet that got under his skin. @DefendWallStreet tweeted: “Where is champion of 99% @UncleRush? Vacationing on a tropical island for two weeks for the holidays”, to which Simmons replied:  “So what ii can vacation U guys eat a d*ck u control too much of our government Happy holidayz .” With such foul language, he forgot to hashtag his tweet with “#keepingitclassy”. Perhaps one Page Six commenter said it best, wryly remarking that Simmons was doing his activist work in a place… where he would not be bothered by the other 99%.

Now, perhaps Uncle Rush means well. Let’s put it to the test, shall we? If Simmons truly believes in the need for income redistribution, why not take action himself? Why wait? So Russell, I propose you do the following:  Go ahead and advocate for increased tax rates to affect others like you across the board, sure, but in the meantime, why don’t you write a check to the U.S. government (they’ll accept it!); take no deductions and use no loopholes on this year’s tax return, especially considering you bemoaned during the Olbermann interview that you don’t pay taxes because of said loopholes (I’m sure your accountant will oblige your request!); and give away a significant portion of your wealth to the 99%’ers! What’s that, Russell? I hear crickets.

Until the “tax me more! honestly, I mean it!” Russell Simmons and Matt Damons of the world quit the lip service, quit the hypocrisy, and actually pony up some cash and put their money where their mouths are, or, better yet, admit they have a right to their own fair-and-square-earned wealth and that it does more good in the private sector than in the government’s hands… we have many more Mugatu “crazy pills” moments ahead of us.

For your enjoyment, check out this clip of Russell rightly being heckled for his hypocrisy by the only two Occupy attendees with a triple-digit IQ. Fast forward to the 2:00 minute mark for “YOU are part of the problem, Rus-sell!” Her smirk adds a level of sass appreciated by yours truly.

What do you all think?  Is Russell Simmons a limousine liberal hypocrite extraordinaire or does his stance make sense?

—–

Moore declares the #Occupy movement “peaceful” as though none of this is happening.

Michael Moore’s ability to lie really is truly breathtaking.

But don’t tell that to Burns himself, who apparently sees Prohibition as yet another way to slam the Right’s misgivings over illegal immigration. Burns, arguably the most trusted documentary filmmaker on the scene, did just that on a Sept. 28 appearance on “The Colbert Report:”

“This is a story of single-issue political campaigns that metastasized with horrible, unintended consequences – the demonization of immigrants, smear campaigns and the loss of civil discourse,” Burns told the show’s flip host, Stephen Colbert.

Here’s betting Burns wasn’t thinking about Vice President Joe Biden calling conservatives “terrorists.”

I interviewed Burns a few years back in connection with his six-episode series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Burns is a master storyteller who doesn’t need snail-like pans to captivate a crowd. Spend 20 minutes with him, and you’ll wish someone gave him his own radio show. He’d be a natural.

But hearing him pontificate on politics is a teeth-grinding experience. This sharp, inquisitive fellow spits out the same, stale talking points you’d hear from a quick dose of Keith Olbermann. It’s no accident Burns was one of the first few people to sign on to Olbermann’s new Current TV program.

I remember hearing Burns wax less than poetic about the Right on “The Adam Carolla Podcast” a few months back after an otherwise long and vibrant interview.

Long may Burns reign as the sober and scholarly documentarian of our age. One wishes he applied that same, skeptical mind to some of his political musings.

—–

Classy response from the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and GOP presidential candidate.

Bottom line, Janeane Garofalo doesn’t believe a Black man can or should think different from her, and if he does, he’s either corrupt (taking a pay off) or crazy (suffering Stockholm Syndrome); and that kind of thinking makes Garofalo the one with serious racial issues.

Of course, both she and Keith Olbermann have gotten away with this because our corrupt MSM is too busy screaming racist at those on the Right who use such sinister phrases as “basketball,” “food stamps,” and “dark clouds.”

None of this should be surprising, though. After all, this is the same MSM currently freaking out over Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry’s faith after spending all of 2008 assuring us that The Man Who Would Be President’s attendance for 20 years in a racist church run by his mentor — a racist, anti-American demagogue — didn’t matter.

Moreover, Olbermann recently announced that Lewis, Burns, and Moore, will all be part of his new show, set to premier on Al Gore’s Current TV on June 20, 2011.

As it concerns Moore, this announcement is very timely because it comes on the heels of Moore’s incredibly ignorant op-ed scribbling – incredibly ignorant even for him – about our actions against the recently deceased Osama bin Laden. It appears that Moore believes our country’s image would have been better served had we captured Osama and brought him back for trial instead of just killing him on the spot.

Yet Moore’s thoughts are so incongruous that in the same op-ed in which he makes his case for a trial, he also wrote that he’s against the death penalty. By extrapolation, this can only mean that if we had in fact brought Osama back for trial, even upon finding him guilty, the most Moore would have wanted us to do for punishment would have been to sentence him to life in prison.

When MSNBC’s Ed Schultz pointed to the inherent foolishness of Moore’s words, referring to them as just so much “intellectual liberal handwringing,” ex-MSNBC employee Olbermann came to Moore’s defense: “For him to…be accused of ‘intellectual liberal handwringing’ by a supposedly liberal commentator on a supposedly liberal television network is outrageous.”f

I say kudos to Schultz for doing something a lot of liberals can’t do: namely, looking beyond political labels long enough to know that Osama’s death was a great thing for America (whether it made Moore happy or not).

As for Olbermann’s defense of Moore, what else should we expect? The guy is so washed up that his new show is going to be carried on the same exciting channel that brought us Al Gore’s 24/7 climate-disaster programming.

If I were that washed up, I might even hang out with Michael Moore.

When BH editor John Nolte asked me if I wanted to take a peek at the pilot script for Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming HBO series about the drama behind the scenes on a cable news network, I said “Yes!” without hesitation. Word on the street was that the main character was based on MSNBC’s recently dethroned Keith Olbermann, and I was curious: Would “Olbermann” be raked over the coals or treated as a media icon?

I’ll get to the answer in a few.

The show, which is as yet unnamed, takes place behind the scenes of News Night with Will McCallister, a show broadcast by the fictitious United Broadcasting Systems. Will McCallister is the pseudo-Olbermann clone who knows a lot about sports, can’t be bothered to remember the names of his staffers, and can’t seem to hold on to an executive producer (E.P.) for longer than 14 weeks. In fact, in the show’s opener, Will is given the unhappy news that his current E.P. Don has elected to join Will’s protégé, who has just been given his own show, and Don is taking most of the production staff with him.

Amongst the few junior staffers who are still on Will’s team are Maggie, Steve and Neal. Maggie and Steve are involved romantically, even though such fraternization amongst co-workers is discouraged, and the relationship is not going well.

Even worse is the news that Will’s boss Charlie Skinner, who is the president of the cable news division, has gone behind Will’s back and replaced Don with Mackenzie MacHale, a top-notch producer whose own chance at on-air stardom at a rival network fizzled and who is now in need of a job.

The twist here is that MacKenzie is Will’s former lover, with whom he parted ways on a sour note several years before. And when Will and MacKenzie come face to face for the first time in three years on her first day on the job, we are treated to Will’s famous temper a la Olbermann. “How dare you SIR!” (No, Will doesn’t actually say that. I just couldn’t resist.)

So far, so good. All typical fodder for this type of television drama: love triangles, stars with inflated egos and sneaky bosses. Then there’s the gratuitous liberal jab at certain big corporations in the guise of entertainment – Sorkin hearkens back to the BP oil well explosion for the big news of the day and Halliburton’s use of faulty cement to seal the well’s bottom. Whatever.

But let’s get back to my original question: Is “Olbermann” raked over the coals or treated as a media icon? The answer is, a little of the former and a lot of the latter. Yes, the Will McCallister character seems highly unlikable. It’s surprising that his head can fit through the front door, let alone fit within the confines of a television screen. Nobody seems to like working with him and they exit stage right as soon as they get the opportunity. In fact, Charlie Skinner tells Will that he’s probably “nicer to work for than Bin Laden.” Talk about damning with faint praise. Yet despite all of Will’s foibles, the most important thing we discover about him is that he’s a newsman who’s been wronged.

Yes, wronged. MacKenzie bemoans the fact that “they baited” Will into going into an on-air rant about how there aren’t any statistics to support the claim that America is the greatest nation in the world. (Who are “they?” It’s not mentioned, but it doesn’t exactly need to be spelled out.) As a result, Will’s lost his nerve, lost his edge, and the network has been forced by his insurance company to hire a body guard due to his receiving death threats.

There’s a money quote in this scene, uttered by MacKenzie, where he tells Will he’s not a liberal, he’s a newscaster and therefore needs to be himself — that’s his brand.

See? Newscasters are not liberals, they are themselves. And people like MacKenzie are needed to help them broadcast the right information to the hoi polloi because, as we’re also told, the great unwashed are uninformed and need people like Mackenzie and Will to give them information. Such nobility…

Get that? Maybe I’m nitpicking, but note she doesn’t say false or incorrect information, but wrong information. Who decides what’s right? Who decides what’s wrong?

Who watches those who make those decisions? That’s where we come in, my friends.

Yes, Keith Olbermann is gone.

So people are obviously wondering – who’s going to replace Olby?

My suggestion: the great Brian Dunkleman.

He is an American treasure.

Now, there’s much conjecture behind Keith’s exit. Some say it’s ideology – that Comcast wanted to rid MSNBC of it’s left-leaning furniture. If that’s true, then they only lost a tattered end of a sectional.

But others say it’s cash – since Olby is the kind of guy whose salary will never be enough – if there’s someone else making more.

It’s the old, “I only walk taller if my neighbor is limping” sort of thing.

Anyway, it’s odd for a progressive to be so enamored by competition. And cash. I suppose as long as your motives are Chomsky-approved, you’re an exception to your own rules. Things like basic politeness don’t apply – as long as you only care about my money.

I call this the Sean Penn rule, named after my buddy Sean who went to Penn state.

He was a jerk.

Anyway, it’s a glorious hypocrisy: that a man so disgusted by America’s me-first attitude turns out to be nothing more than a consumption addict, gobbling dollars like the ruthless corporate machine he so publicly loathes.

Never mind crud like global warming or social justice – what really moves Olby “forward” is the Benjamins.

I can’t blame him. I love Mr. Bratt.

But you know that if you were in his place, doing what he does – he’d call you the worst person in the world.

And be mad that he’s only making a few million for it.

…and if you disagree with me, you’re slightly worse than Hitler.

But last week, the political glory was complimented (and advanced) by the all-out trouncing conservatives gave to liberals in America’s pop culture.

Just think of it: Over the course of just one week HBO aired Dennis Miller’s new stand-up special, Bristol Palin secured a place in the finals for Dancing With The Stars (DTWS), “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” premiered t huge ratings, and President George W. Bush brought the house down on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show.”

While decidedly more libertarian than conservative, Miller’s “The Big Speech” will grate on many liberals because of his ongoing unapologetic support for military actions against terrorism and his abiding love of country. At the same time, his common sense approach to many of life’s quandaries will continue to be a breath of fresh air to the myriad of conservative fans he won to his side in the days and months after 9/11. (This type of approach allows him to remain more comedian than political pundit, yet say of the recent midterm elections: “I think the kids’ table has been in charge for a while now and it’s time for something else. …I’m not anti-Obama, I just disagree.”)

As for Bristol Palin’s ascension to the finals for DTWS, the middle ground is harder to find than it might be with Miller’s show: Her climb toward the top on DTWS has literally driven the Left apoplectic. So much so that liberal bloggers have cried foul, accusing her of cheating and claiming that Bristol has only done this well because “Sarah Palin paid someone off.”

Tweeted another blogger: “These republicans are taking over! They vote Brandy off of DWTS and kept Bristol Palin! Crazy!” And still other bloggers, who lack the couth to blog without resorting to profanities, have indicated in clear language that they believe this will be the last season for DWTS if Bristol does indeed win.

Think about it folks: We have a national deficit that’s gotten so big it almost escapes comprehension, yet liberals are fleeing to medicine cabinets for nitro tablets because Sarah Palin’s daughter has made the finals.

Was last week a great week or what?

Speaking of Palin, her reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” debuted as “the “top rated series premiere in network TLC’s history.” As five million viewers watched that first episode, they saw the kind of woman the National Organization for Women (NOW) hates, because she doesn’t need social programs and pity parties contrived by the Left in order to get ahead in life. They also saw the kind of woman Keith Olbermann deplores, because she can bake cupcakes with her kids and kick the liberal lunacy of open borders in the head at the same time.

Thus, while viewers saw Palin fish, climb rocks, and go glacier hiking, they also saw the 14-foot tall privacy fence her husband built to keep their creepy neighbor from taking pictures of her and heard her say of the fence: “I thought [this] was a good example [that]…others could look at and say, ‘Oh, this is what we need to do to secure our nation’s border.’”

But as good as Miller, Bristol Palin, and Sarah Palin were, the crème de la crème of last week was Bush on Leno. From the moment he walked out on the stage (to a standing ovation), to the moment he and Leno shook hands at the close of the interview, Leno seemed honored, if not apprehensive.

Before an audience that continued to interrupt with applause for various answers given by Bush, viewers heard him defend his decision to make the 9/11 attackers face “justice” and somberly talk about other decisions a leader has to make: like deciding to remain calm in the Florida classroom on the morning of 9/11, because he knew the children were watching him and he didn’t want to react to the news of the attacks in such a way as to scare them.

Bush emerged from the interview a leader again. And this is just one more reason I believe conservatives throughout the nation must be asking themselves if there’s any way this week can be as good as the last.

Rap mogul and purple-prosed hyperbolist Russell Simmons over at the HuffPo:

If [Keith Olbermann] goes we lose the Edward Murrow of our generation, the voice that spits truth to power and vested interests. I have devoted my entire adult life to truth telling. Without Olbermann, MSNBC can’t survive — and the voice of progress will fall to the dark ages, when one unholy church dictated a fictional version of the truth.

When exactly did one unholy church dictate the truth? Prior to the creation of talk radio, the Internet and Fox News, we remember the one unholy church of left-wing newsmen disguised as sober, objective reporters, but our guess is that that’s probably not what Simmons mean — our guess is that Simmons has no idea what he means.

 This is just about Mr. Yogic Scripture’s insecure need to put his face on a big story.

A couple of days before his suspension, Keith Olbermann sat for an interview with the New York Times to discuss this and that, and here’s what the Indefinitely Suspended “Countdown” anchor had to say about Jon Stewart’s above-it-all-ery:

NYT: You wrote on Twitter that Stewart had jumped the shark. Are you suggesting his show is in decline?

Olbermann: I said he jumped a small shark. If he believes he has no political viewpoint, that’s ludicrous. For him to now say, ‘‘I’m not in the media, I’m not poised in this world of political expression, I never take gratuitous shots at people or go over the top and I’m not particularly pointed in one direction,’’ each of those things was ludicrous.

And this is how Jon Stewart effectively turned himself into a joke over the past few months. Even Olbermann sees through the clown nose and is willing to publicly point and scoff. Stewart drained a ton of political and moral capital with his “Restore Sanity” rally, and especially with his wildly hypocritical and sanctimonious lecture at the end. 

The whole affair was a lose-lose for Stewart. His ratings might have gotten a bump but the Dems still got hammered in the midterms and in the process of hoping to stop that Stewart built a glass house and lost the power he once held to shame others. Now he’s just another marginalized, left-wing comedian with a show that attracts less than 5% of the population –even Keith Olbermann sees that.  

Hope it was worth it to Mr. ClownBoyFunnyManSmirkBoy.

As far as the latest Olbermann news goes, this isn’t the proper site to weigh in on, but let me quickly address the elephant in the room. I agree completely with Rick Moran’s assessment. And if you need another shining example of the rank stupidity of NBC’s policy regarding their staff’s political contributions — a policy that won’t allow them to contribute to the politician of their choice off the air but does allow them to contribute 24/7 in-kind contributions using the full power of the NBC/MSNBC network to relentlessly propagandize for the Left on the air  – look no further than here. Olby’s replacement had to be replaced, as though the editor of The Nation donating $250 to some Illinois Dem will somehow undercut his journalistic integrity.

The NBC/MSNBC Emperor has no clothes journalistic integrity, but in order to prove he does, the network is killing off emperors. If the network wants to repair their irreparable reputation, someone might suggest they exert more control over what they allow their employees to broadcast and less over their personal affairs.

MSNBC is melting down and there just isn’t enough popcorn to pop, is there?