BRETT: Kirstie Alley was on Fox Nation’s Tucker Carlson Today talking about the Hollywood reaction to her support of Trump. It’s really… I mean, it’s unbelievable the way the folks in Hollywood have gone after Kirstie Alley. Alley, by the way, is no staunch conservative by any stretch. She actually voted Democrat most of her life. Here’s what she told Tucker Carlson.
ALLEY: I was on a set and I spoke up. I didn’t know it was gonna be some big deal. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna vote for Trump.” Oh, my God. Some producer took me aside and said, “I’m going to too, but if anyone hears me say that, I’ll never work again.” People go, “You’re so brave.” No, I think I’m stupid, because honestly it is a real situation. And it is a real blackballing situation, and it’s so strange to me because artists are free thinkers, for the most part.
CARLSON: Yes!
ALLEY: You can be cooking meth and sleeping with hookers as long as, apparently, you didn’t vote for Trump. (laughing)
CARLSON: Mmm-hmm.
ALLEY: You know, I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone a bit, with the whole concept of it, because, you know, an example is on Twitter. I had many celebrities followed me, and now I think like three follow me. And I am going, “I’m the same person. You know, I’m the girl who voted for Obama twice,” and I’m like, “So, you liked me when I voted for Obama, and now you’re this?” And it made me have to rethink, weirdly, my whole friendships.
BRETT: There are a lot of closet conservatives in Hollywood, as Alley found out on that set, that don’t dare reveal their truth for fear of never working again. And it’s a legitimate fear. One individual who’s not afraid is actor Nick Searcy, Rush’s buddy and former EIB guest host.
If you’re familiar with Nick, you know he’s hilarious. He once took a page out of Rush’s book and illustrated absurdity by being absurd after he wrapped on a project and knew what he had to do in order to land another gig in the liberal coven that is Hollywood.
RUSH: You know our old buddy Nick Searcy? Nick Searcy is a famous, world famous actor, played a U.S. Marshal on Justified that just finished shooting, final season, they’ve wrapped it. Nick Searcy was a scout for the Oakland A’s in Moneyball. I mean, he’s been in all kinds of productions. Nick Searcy is one of us. He used to be. Well, now that Justified has finished shooting, Nick Searcy has renounced conservatism.
Well, he’s looking for work now in Hollywood, and so he has posted on Facebook. He started with a tweet. Now he’s posted the following on Facebook: “Now that Justified has finished shooting, and I am free to pursue other projects, I would just like to say to all the producers in Hollywood, I was just kidding about all that anti-Democrat stuff I posted. Barack Obama is not only the greatest president in American history, possibly the greatest human being who has ever lived.
“I applaud every single thing he’s ever done, and I now see the error of my ways and support every policy he has ever and will ever propose. My agents are standing by for your call.” Nick Searcy. Oh, you’re not buying it in there? Snerdley’s not buying it. You must know Nick pretty well then. (laughs) I know he’s fearless and he’s got his own.
He does have a Twitter ID and he’s fearless there, but this is classically funny. I mean, this is just, this is just in their face. You know, Nick sent me some of his cigars over there. I got ’em last week, an autographed box of Nick Searcy cigars. Yeah, he’s got his own line of cigars over there, it’s his own band and label on the things, too. Yeah. It’s great.
BRETT: He was obviously being sarcastic, but as Rush often said, “All good humor contains an element of truth.” Kirstie Alley learned the hard way as have others. It’s almost like Hollywood as reverted back to 1947. But instead of communism, it’s conservatism that gets you tarred and feathered in your career, and that’s one of the huge challenges that’s out there. I mean, even the folks that used to be high-profile rock ‘n’ roll people have come around regarding freedom and liberty and conservatism. They understand that there’s a lot more at stake than just satisfying a few folks out there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BRETT: I’m looking at this situation with Lori Lightfoot, and I’m shaking my head and scratching my head at the same time. Literally, I’m shaking and scratching at the same time, because Lori Lightfoot, who is the — I think safe to say — failing mayor of the city of Chicago is now halfway through her term and is “slamming the overwhelming whiteness of the Chicago press,” and has said that in order to “commemorate the midway point of her first term as the mayor of the city of Chicago as a woman of color,” she wants to only do interviews with “reporters of color.”
She says that this is what we’re gonna do. “We’re gonna only talk to folks who are people of color. We’re not going to talk to the other reporters out there. The Constitution didn’t consider me a person in any way, shape, or form because I’m a woman, because I’m black, because I’m gay. I’m not an originalist.”
I mean, okay. You can say that. The Constitution didn’t consider you a person in any way, shape, or form because you’re a woman because you’re black because you’re gay and you’re not an originalist. But those people that aired in writing in that way, right?
According to the standards in which we live today and according to the standards which were established as a result of what took place with the Civil War, where more than 600,000 Americans died to preserve the union and to make the union “a more perfect union,” to quote a president… You can say that, but those Founding Fathers also left us a mechanism built into the Constitution that excluded you back then, that made an ability to include you by amending it.
So I would say, it is still worth talking to white reporters. I mean, you’re sort of punching at a third group of people that had nothing to do with the original writing of the U.S. Constitution. What does a 30-year-old white or Hispanic man or woman in Chicago have to do with the Founding Fathers? I think it’s a fair point. There’s a lot of other stuff going on out there, and it was Rush who talked, back in 2003, about how he would gladly lose a job to stand up for free speech.
RUSH: Look it, I know I’m right about this. I’m not going to retract anything. I’m not going to back off of there. Absolutely. Not yet in this country is there anything to apologize for in expressing an opinion – particularly about sports, for crying out loud! When absolutely – you know, I used this line and my wife says I’ve overdone it – at the end of the day in sports nobody’s taxes get raised, nobody gets sent off to war.
But, yeah, people get their feelings hurt in sports every day. Their teams lose. They get disappointed by a whole bunch of things that happen in sports. But it is in a distinct place in our culture. It does contribute quite a bit to the self-esteem of populations, cities where there are professional and college teams, no question about it, and there are high, great sensitivities.
But I am not going to sit here and apologize or regret anything I said because, A, I was right; B, I’ve got people now who agree not only was I right, but that what was said was not anything that needs to be apologized for. Now, there are a lot of people who disagree with that, but that’s fine.
You know, over the course of my hosting this program, ladies and gentlemen — and I do have in almost all that we’re talking about today — I have a 15-plus-year reference that I can cite, and I certainly have here. I have not once, never on this program — other than in the cases where we’ve had wacko callers who have engaged in profanity or things that are in obvious, obvious ways over the line.
I have never, ever said that something somebody said to me shouldn’t be heard. I have never told them they don’t have the right to say that and how dare they call me and how dare they think that. That has never been part of this program. What I’ve always said on this program is, “Meet me in the arena of ideas.
Meet me smack-dab in the arena of ideas, and I’ll discuss anything with anybody, and I’m willing to be wrong, and I’m willing to be stupid. I’m willing to run the risk of being both because this is what freedom is essentially all about in a free society.”
There are others, not me, who are telling other people to shut up, to not say things because they don’t have the right to say things, they don’t have the right to think things, and they ought to be punished when they do, but it’s not me. I’m not the one that’s intolerant nor are many on my side of the ideological aisle.
It is the other side that has created speech codes: political correctness. It is they who have determined what’s appropriate and what isn’t, and what punishment ought to descend to people or ascend to people who have violated their codes. In fact, people who disagree with me on this program get moved to the top of the caller roster line.
I have always made that promise, and that promise has always been kept. So nobody is told to shut up here. Nobody is told what they shouldn’t say, told they can’t say things on this program. It’s quite the opposite. I’ve always, as I say, said, “Meet me in the arena of ideas.” In this instance, it is now being said that well, everybody knew what they were going to get at ESPN.
And nobody should be surprised by this, and that ESPN is actually to blame for this. What is this kind of thinking in a free country with free speech? The characterizations of not only what I’ve said, but what others have said to me is pretty dangerous. You know, the effort, I guess, to silence some people from speaking because they’re afraid of what others’ reaction to it will be, is pretty successful.
I don’t play the game by those rules, and I’m willing to accept what happens. But I am not, at same time when the outcry results, going to say, “please forgive me, I guess I really didn’t mean it.” I meant everything said, thought about it the night before, intended to say it, very proud that I said it. I think it’s right. So throw me in jail. So fire me! That’s what people have wanted to do, that’s what people are applauding today.
Fine, I’ll gladly.
If that’s what it takes to stand up for free speech, fine.
BRETT: The thing that had Rush so far ahead of the time back in 2003 relative to today was this idea of the left wanting to determine, one, whether you had the right to express yourself; and, two, what the terms were that you would be permitted to express yourself. So they went from saying, “I can’t believe you said that,” to saying, “You may not say these things,” to saying, “We have already decided you’re likely to say these things, so let’s precancel you.”
That’s what’s so infuriating about the free-speech conversation, and to go back to Lori Lightfoot, it’s this idea that “I believe that this country is so flawed, right? Systemic racism? It’s so flawed that they can’t even talk to these reporters made up of these particular racial backgrounds to even talk to them. We’re gonna wall them off completely.
“We’re gonna only talk to these reporters over here,” and her presupposition that’s incredible is that a reporter of color would not ask her a difficult question or that a white reporter would ask her a tough question. There are plenty of fawning reporters across the spectrum. There are plenty of critical reporters from across the spectrum.
And that’s the maddening thing when you break people down to simply their racial or sexual or political or religious identity. People are three-dimensional creatures with three-dimensional ideas. And this idea we’re gonna set a standard of purity in which you must check each of these boxes before we even entertain a question from you, or even entertain a conversation or a debate with you…
When Rush said he’d meet anybody in the arena of ideas, you know he’s right. One of the biggest memories I have in the last couple years was that back and forth Rush did with Charlamagne Tha God, that appearance. That was bold, and he was a bold guy.