When is it OK to Call Someone a Nazi?

Godfather Politics

VERBATIM POST

It depends which end of the political spectrum you’re on. If you’re a liberal, everybody who does not agree with you is a Nazi. So it was OK for Susan Sarandon twice to call Pope Benedict a “Nazi.”[1]

It’s not that Sarandon was not condemned. She was. Political journalist and Senior Editor of the American Spectator John Fund took her to task for the Nazi reference.

Actress and activist Susan Sarandon is just the latest in a conga line of celebrities who love to curry favor with the politically correct crowd.

At a panel discussion over the weekend at the elite Hampton Film Festival on New York’s Gold Coast, La Sarandon opined that she had once sent a copy of a book to the pope. “The last one. Not this Nazi one we have now,” she explained.

She later repeated the slur at a cocktail party held afterwards.

Crowds at both venues were unfazed by the remark and lavished praise on the Oscar-winning actress for her work and her recent show of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also called on Sarandon to apologize for her slur. “National Director Abraham H. Foxman was quoted as saying in an ADL statement. ‘Ms. Sarandon may have her differences with the Catholic Church, but that is no excuse for throwing around Nazi analogies. Such words are hateful, vindictive and only serve to diminish the true history and meaning of the Holocaust.’”

So far, except from these organizations and conservative commentators, Sarandon will still be able to work in Hollywood. I suspect, however, that a lot of studios will think twice about hiring her, especially if one of her movies flops and the money-backers find out that it was her liberal beliefs and Nazi references that sunk the film.

Did you see how quickly ESPN dropped Hank Williams, Jr. after his Nazi comment on FOX News even though he didn’t call anyone a Nazi? Was it foolish? Yes. But not as foolish as Roseanne Barr dressing up like Adolf Hitler and baking cookies as if they were Jews in gas ovens. As far as I can tell, she’s still working and so is Susan Sarandon.

Notes:

1. Like nearly all German youths, Pope Benedict, then called Joseph Ratzinger, was a member of the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary Nazi group. Membership was mandatory for German teens during the Nazi regime. If he was a Nazi, then nearly every teenager living in Germany at that time was a Nazi. [↩]