Your #Occupy update

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As predictable as the sun rising in the East, rich Marxists who have attained their wealth via the capitalist system in this country go native:

Saturday, Occupiers held a rally for "artists, musicians, writers and activists" midway between downtown LA and Beverly Hills. The website announcing the event promised a keynote speech by Van Jones and hinted at appearances by Hollywood celebrities. Yesterday, Variety reported that Hollywood did turn out:

Edward Norton, Elijah Wood, Marisa Tomei and Jason Alexander turned out for "All in for the 99%," an effort to engage artists and actors in promoting the "99% Spring," a plan to train 100,000 volunteers in nonviolent action, including protests at corporate shareholder meetings. Van Jones, founder of Rebuild the Dream, has been promoting the plans, and addressed the group.

The event was sponsored by Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream, MoveOn.org, and SEIU among others. MoveOn produced a video showing the celebrities who were on hand including Jack Black (as part of Tenacious D) and Moby.
LA Weekly has a few additional photos including Jason Alexander shaking hands with Congresswoman Maxine Waters. There's also a shot of performance artists acting like corpses wrapped in American flags. LA Weekly notes that the event raised money for Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream group.

In reading this, we could not help but be reminded of Tom Wolfe's classic Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers from 1970 and its documenting the rise of the New Left and in particular Wolfe's recounting of a cocktail party on Park Avenue in New York for the ostensible purpose of raising money for the Black Panthers. Wolfe wrote:

I just thought it was a scream, because it was so illogical by all ordinary thinking. To think that somebody living in an absolutely stunning duplex on Park Avenue could be having in all these guys who were saying, 'We will take everything away from you if we get the chance,' which is what their program spelled out, was the funniest thing I had ever witnessed.

42 years on, apparently, irony is dead as there is indeed a Occupy Hollywood sentiment:

It's time to stop paying Johnny Depp "stupid money." Celebrities make too much -- and we can do something about it

It goes without saying, perhaps, for these SAG members and proponents of intellectual and creative property rights, that this is all just window dressing as these very same people faced with real change as proposed by #Occupy would be the staunchest defenders of the status quo.

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