The other day Lynn Redgrave (67 years old) succumbed to breast cancer. Unlike her notorious older sister Vanessa and her recently deceased Trotskyite brother Corin, she never showed Marxist tendencies and by all accounts was a classy lady who loved both her adopted home America and her native Britain. Vanessa’s daughter Natasha Richardson who tragically died in a skiing accident last year also seemed to be a decent normal person. As this article shows, the less said about the rest of the bizarre Redgrave family, the better. Talent does not necessarily mean brains.
Note – as a commenter writes - “Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were not born in squalid poverty. They are another harsh reminder that the truly poor and dispossessed rarely engage in radical politics. Nope, that dubious honor usually goes to the sons and daughters of fairly affluent parents.”
by Ron Radosh
There is no better précis of how the Left thinks about the world, and acts on it, than the British journalist Nick Cohen’s article appearing in the new issue of Standpoint. Cohen writes a candid appraisal of what left-wing politics did to the mind and life of the late actor Corin Redgrave, brother of the more famous Vanessa, who like her brother, is a lifetime member of a small fanatic Trotskyist sect, the Workers Revolutionary Party, led by a man named Gerry Healy. The group was so fanatic that it accused Trotsky’s American followers of having been responsible for his murder in Mexico, ignoring all the evidence that it was an NKVD operation orchestrated by Joseph Stalin.
As Cohen notes, all the Redgraves are good actors. Vanessa could, while she denounced Israel and praised Palestinian terrorists, at the same time appear on American television as a Jewish concentration camp victim in a Holocaust drama. I used to say, when people asked for my position on the blacklist of the 1950s, that I despise Vanessa Redgrave’s politics, but would go at a minute’s notice to see her perform in a Broadway play. I praised her acting ability, and her prowess as an actor did not make me pay an ounce of attention to her political harangues.
This, of course, is not how the British media (so similar to the American media in this regard) dealt with her brother’s politics after his recent death. All the usual sources praised Redgrave as a man who fought “injustice and oppression,” and who tried “to make a better world.” That is certainly the case, if by a better world one means the regimented police states so favored by Marxist-Leninist regimes, to which Redgrave devoted his life.
As Cohen reveals, the truth is that both Vanessa and Corin “spent their adult lives serving a repellent totalitarian party led by a rapist and a friend not of ‘human rights’ and ‘justice’, as Radio 4 pretended, but of dictatorship and terror.” Cohen paints a picture of the paranoia that surrounded the Trotskyist party’s headquarters in Clapham, and the leader’s admonition that all members “had to cut off all ties with everyone except the chosen few.”
Read the rest here: The Truth about the Redgraves and the ’60s Left: Kudos to journalist Nick Cohen
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Tags: Ron Radosh
Maybe you should hold this and have a stock market thread instead?
@ Nevergiveup:
It will be up at 5:00 PM since the market doesn’t close until 6.
Speakin’ of Brits, let’s all congratulate Cpl Craig Harrison on a job well done.
Greek’s condition is the condition the tax and spend commie Democrats will have our U.S. condition in.
like that
Use it in Nov. 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8660702.stm
The main interesting point is where they get their funding. If I’m reading that correctly it means that under socialism, the fat cat successful movie companies still get most the money. So how is socialism an improvement for them?
@ Nevergiveup:
CNN already has it as a recovery at close
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/06/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm
I’m not watching it, I have made my peace…took my ticker and monex off my desktop the day after the election.
Got Ammo?
BuddyG wrote:
Yep, congrats to Cpl Harrison on his fine shooting.
And rest in peace Lynn Redgrave. Sorry you had such crappy siblings.
@ Rodan:
The market closes at 4:00pm EST
Scott Madsen wrote:
Next we will find out Obama used his vast personal wealth from his books to support the market. All praise to the Great Hope!!!
/
Good news about the kids kicked out of school for wearing the flag.
http://www.silentmajority09.com/2010/05/wearing-american-flag-in-american.html
School district disagreed, hopefully there is disciplinary action pending.
Obama = U.S.A. Greek Too.
I have always had an approach/avoidance when it comes to the Redgraves. They are an extremely talented family, and Vanessa’s performance in “Playing for Time” was extraordinary. Of course, juxtapose that story about the orchestra in Auschwitz with her support of the people who are trying to finish Hitler’s work and it makes your head spin.
I was rather gratified that she got her ass booed off the stage at the Academy Awards when she started spouted her pro-Palestinian crap.
@ Nevergiveup:
It’s recovered some of it’s losses. I bet teh Fed steped in and prevented a collapse.
Lynn Redgrave always seemed like a perfectly nice individual.
She seemed to have escaped the darkness that her sister Vanessa
wallowed in.
Rodan wrote:
Nah, but maybe, I think it was just market forces. Now they are saying a Procter and Gamble trade that was a mistake caused the tumble they are saying now?
@ Carolina Girl:
Oh she is an extraordinary actress, however I hate spending money on any films she is in. The last one that I saw which she was in was a Peter O’Toole film called “Venus” which I really did enjoy.
I did not know this about Corin Redgrave. That’s going to put a damper on my next viewing of “A Man for All Seasons.”
And now for something completely different. More follies from the TSA. How much safer do you feel now when flying?
@ Carolina Girl:
I said it before, but it needs repeating. Your kick in the butt to Chuck on the way out the door was pure artistry.
It was world class!
Carolina Girl wrote:
Corin was even more left wing then Vanessa. A real lunatic. A Man For All Seasons was made 44 years ago – hard to believe. I have liked that film less and less each time I see it. Vanessa had a non speaking role as Anne Boleyn.
Foghorn Leghorn @7 wrote:
No Courageous Restraint medal for him
Carolina Girl wrote:
Yes. Back then shilling for the Palis was considered so far-left crazy as to be socially unacceptable, even in Hollywood. Today? Who knows, but I hate to think.
The Left, by its very nature as a “Movement,” has no fixed principles. The list of victims and the demands for “justice” must always increase. And so yesterday’s extremism becomes tomorrow’s consensus.
RIX wrote:
It was the “flounce” to measure all flounces by although John_in_AZ did a great one the other night.
@ Carolina Girl:
What character did he play? In my youth Vanessa was a favorite actresses until I found out about her pali love.
RIX wrote:
She always came across like a class act as did her niece Natasha Richardson.
@ Speranza:
I went to see “Julia” only because a friend begged me to go with her. While I wanted to like the movie, between Redgrave and Fonda I couldn’t figure out which presence onscreen bothered me more.
Ever notice that when Fonda needs to go on location shooting and the town says “no permits – we don’t want that [bitch] here,” she immediately goes on a PR offensive, saying that she’s not “that woman” anymore. Filming finished, she immediately goes on the MSM cable rounds, blasting conservatives, Bush, the War on Terror, etc. I do enjoy that her films don’t seem to make money. I refuse to watch ‘em.
@ Carolina Girl:
I can’t stomach watching Vanessa Redgrave in anything, but I would have liked to have seen her get booed off a stage somewhere.
vagabond trader wrote:
He played More’s son-in-law William Roper. Btw More’s “daughter” in the film Susannah York is another uber leftist.
@ Nevergiveup:
Supposedly human era,not entirely convincing with the EU going into the krapper.
@ vagabond trader:
William Roper – the lucky bastard that got to marry Susannah York.
@ Speranza:
Damn,all the good ones. Glenda Jackson also from what I’ve read.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Jane Fonda for awhiel seemd to want to make amends to the American public but after Bush became unpopular, she started reverting to her leftism. I actually saw her and her husband Tom Hayden speak at Brooklyn College late in 1972. To say the least neither one impressed me much.
@ Nevergiveup:
A trade cause the tumble? Could be it probably was going to go down but not this much.
@ Eliana:
Maybe her getting booed off is on Youtube? either way she’s a nasty Hard Leftist.
@ Carolina Girl:
She hasn’t changed a bit since she went to Hanoi as a traitor.
When she started protesting the war in Iraq, someone asked her if she felt bad that the demonstrations against the Vietnam war and the pullout resulted in the murders of MILLIONS of people over there.
She wasn’t sorry in the slightest.
She said something like, “We shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
This meant that she was more than willing to see millions of people killed in Iraq due to an early U.S. pullout and she intended to reject responsibility for it yet again.
vagabond trader wrote:
Glenda Jackson ran for Parliament as a Labour party member. I hope that Mrs Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) is no leftie.
Rodan wrote:
If I knew I would be doing dentistry
It was the mother of all flounces & will endure as a masterpiece.
John_in_Az was entertaining.
@ Rodan:
Somehow it may have triggered an electronic sell threshold and a cascade of sell orders.
@ Rodan:
Good idea – I’ll check.
Yeah, she is a very nasty Hard Leftist.
Both struck me the same way.
@ Eliana:
It was her Academy Award for Julia. But the best moment was right after the speech, when Paddy Chayefsky took the stage to present the writing awards, and said this:
Carolina Girl wrote:
The only good acting in that film IMHO was Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey, Robert Shaw as Henry VIII, and John Hurt’s character. I thought that Paul Scofield played the role as a rigid humorless, sanctimonious prig.
snowcrash wrote:
It was a faulty trade that showed a “Huge” drop in in P&G which is a major component of the Dow and that triggered major automated trading down
@ Speranza:
Some would say that is a perfect description of the historical Thomas More.
@ Carolina Girl:
Today a pro Pali speech would be greeted by a standing ovation.
@ Carolina Girl:
Wow! What a great and immediate response to her nasty speech!
Thanks!!
vagabond trader wrote:
Actually it is. In reality his fellow martyr and Saint, Bishop (and later Cardinal) John Fisher was a more admirable character. More had no problems when Chancellor in roasting “heretics” at the stake.
@ Eliana:
I never will understand the Left’s facisnation with the Palestinians. WHat’s so speacil about them. I’m at the point if I hear another Pro-Palestine crap I’m going to throw up. They love them so much, why don’t tehse Leftists just move to Gaza and see how nice it is.
It’s just unreal!
@ Speranza:
and there would be “guest” videos from members of Hamas and Hezbollah. Hell they’d probably get special dispensation to enter the US to attend.
Speranza wrote:
I think I missed CG’s departure.
I will do my best not to grump about your characterization, but—prejudiced though I am—I am partial to my re-worked bit of Robert Browning.
@ Speranza:
Witches also!
LT before the Judge right now live on TV
Rodan wrote:
I always tell the pro Pali people that in their next lives I hope that they all have to live with them. before he went insane, Andrew Sullivan commented on the absurdity of the group “Queers for Palestine” that it was akin to “Turkeys for Thanksgiving”
@ Speranza:
I like John Fisher. He was the private chaplin of Margaret Beaufort,Henry VIIIs paternal grandmother,a remarkable medieval woman.She must have rolled in her grave at the deeds of her grandson.
I would like to think that today a pro-Palestinian spiel at the Oscars would be met mostly with an uncomfortable silence and maybe only scattered, minimal applause.
I fear there would be little booing, though, as there was back then.
*sigh*
vagabond trader wrote:
I wish all the Left would be forced to move to Gaza or Ramallah.
@ Rodan:
One British leftist in Gaza (I forget what she was doing but she was either a journalist or a volunteer for an NGO) — anyway, she was so in love with Gaza and the “Palestinians” that she invited her parents to see it so that they could fall in love with the “Palestinians” too.
All three of them were kidnapped when the parents got there.
“Welcome to Gaza! You are now our hostages!”
It was weeks or months before they were released.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
It was brilliant and must have struck a chord. Why else would CJ retaliate with a personal attack?
@ Eliana:
William Friedkin was the director of the Academy Awards the year that “Network” was nominated and he informed Chayefsky that if Peter Finch won posthumously for Best Actor, that Chayefsky was to accept the award, and not Finch’s widow. Of course, Finch DID win, and Chayefsky did come up to the podium. But only to say “there is no reason in the world for ME to be up here. There is only one person who deserves to accept this award – Eletha,please come up.” Finch’s widow came up to the greatest amount of applause that night, and delivered the emotion, tearful and heartfelt thank you that Friedkin tried to rob her of.
Friedkin was furious, and Chayefsky basically told him to go fuck himself.
vagabond trader wrote:
By the standards of his time John Fisher (like Wolsey) was remarkably merciful.
citizen_q wrote:
supervisor? what a moron. and what another moron for physically attacking the idiot supervisor. can’t the morons go live someplace else???? please?? yes, i know 52% of the country would leave in that case. i’m OK with that.
OT Support Arizona’s new Immigration Law!
Carolina Girl wrote:
What the fuck was Friedkin’s problem?
@ vagabond trader:
Hizballah and Hamas are fighting the power man! They are standing up for freedom and justice man!
/
Leftist mindset!
@ Nevergiveup:
Makes one wonder about the Plung Protection Team AKA Goldman Sachs’ High Frequency Trading System
Eliana wrote:
I really, really want to see a “Terrorist Hostage Reality Show” that chronicles the privations of a bunch of kidnapped human shields, “human rights workers,” or the like.
Each week they get to vote who has their head sawed off on video.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
You can view CG’s departure in the Blogmocarcy’s December 12, 2009 archive “Final Farewell”.
RIX wrote:
Thank you very much. But I give all deference to the master, Et Norsk Troll, I believe, who told Snowball he wouldn’t know a proton from a crouton.
http://www.citizenlink.org/videofeatures/A000012237.cfm
Just got this from Kevin Sorbo on Twitter. A must watch. Not religious, but this is getting ridiculous.
@ Speranza:
Oh now, Speranza, I love Paul Scofield!
Actually, Charlton Heston acquitted himself pretty well in the role as well.
@ Eliana:
Good, Seriously these Leftists need to stop pretending these so called Palistinians are good people. They really are vile and bent on genocide. I’m sick of hearing about their plight. 1400 years of agression and genocide doesn’t win sympathy from me!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
The best was when Israeli left wing traitor who writes for Haaretz(no shocker) Amira Hass was in gaza and Hamas said they were going to either kill her or hold her hostage and she fled like the dickens for the Israeli border crossing. I still say the IDF should not have let her back into Israel and let her be taken by Hamas.
@ Carolina Girl:
Wow, another great story!!
Thanks!
@ Carolina Girl:
I think that was snork, aka earth2moonbat.
RIX wrote:
She was really great in a play called “Talking Heads.” Funny, witty, compelling. I saw it a few years ago.
She played an old babe named Mrs. Fozzard who ended up having an odd sexual relationship with a old man and she didn’t even know it. He conned her in to walking on him as he lay on the floor under the guise of physical therapy for his pinched something or other. It was hysterical.
She was great on stage. I think she was nice person in real life too.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Scofield was a fine actor but his portrayal of More (or more accurately Robert Bolt’s writing of the More character – Bolt wrote the play) was completely historically inaccurate. It was the Thomas More as he should have been but never was.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I think all of the major flounces need to be collected and linked with a special link @ DoD. Just a question of somebody getting the time to do it.
@ Speranza:
Yeah, she ran straight into the arms of the same IDF that she’s made a career out of trashing!!
Yeah, I think so too. At the very least, they should have gotten some videos of her explanations and pleading for safety from the IDF.
“Who exactly are you turning to for help in this situation?”
“Ok. Um…the ID…[choke]…F.”
“Who???? Say it louder. We didn’t quite catch it on video.”
snowcrash wrote:
And an accusation of sockpuppetry from Island Libertarian. That was strange.
Speranza wrote:
Perhaps so, but typing neither December 12, 2009 nor “Final Farewell” into the Search box brings it up.
@ Eliana:
Not that the kidnapping by their “friends” would have taught them anything. The obvious conclusion their fevered minds would arrive at would something along the line of “the Israelis’ “occupation” drove these nice people to adopt extreme measures”.
@ Eliana:
She should have had Gideon Levy as company in Gaza.
@ Eliana:
I don’t think fonda has changed a bit either. Isn’t it amazing how some people just don’t learn as they go through life. She is right up there in my book with the bomber Bill Ayers. I hate that old scrunt.
@ texasam7:
Actually, I think they did do this after the terrorists in Gaza released them.
texasam7 wrote:
That is exactly how it eventually was played out. They still proclaimed their devotion to “Palestine”.
Mars wrote:
Oh. My. G*d.
we are so doomed.
@ Speranza:
Yeah!
@ snork:
It was news to Island Libertarian he was Iron Fist’s sock.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
My mistake.It was called “Final Say”
http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2009/12/12/final-say/Final Say
Rodan wrote:
Wasn’t Buzz accused of having a sock or two?
@ Eliana:
@ Speranza:
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Maybe you guys can answer me. But what the hell is the British left’s obsession with Palestinians? Serious what do they care about this conflict as the Uk is far from there? I swear every Leftist British website has something on Palestine or Palestiniasn. I really don’t get the focus on these people.
@ snork:
Yes I believe he was accused of that also.
Rodan wrote:
The British as a whole (Left and Right) never reconciled themselves to Israel. Somehow the fact that in 1948 they got driven out by the team at the bottom of the league rankled them and they also have a strong Arabist tradition.
Rodan wrote:
Basically they don’t really like Jews
@ snowcrash:
That’s right! Thank you. I get my nics mixed up all the time.
Snork – forgive me!!!!
Speranza wrote:
Oh, yes; I saw that. It was a honey, all right.
snork wrote:
Oh, yes. A complete, blatant, outright, bald-faced, total lie.
BBL
Rodan wrote:
On the stairs, so to speak—I have to run—the British have always favored the Arabs over the Jews, and are pissed as hell, deep down, that the Jews forced them to make good on the Balfour Declaration.
@ Rodan:
The British government bears a huge responsibility for the extent of the Holocaust. They were brave when it came to Hitler, but they were utter cowards when it came to the Arabs. Thus, they all but totally closed off Jewish immigration to the Jewish National Homeland in 1939.
Millions of European Jews were trapped in Europe as a result of their actions. These Jews were murdered by the Nazis instead.
Britain did fight against the Nazis in north Africa and in Asia, which kept the Nazis and their Arab allies from exterminating roughly half a million Jews in the Palestine Mandate and almost a million Jews in the Arab lands.
Again, Britain was very brave against Nazis but very cowardly against Arabs.
The Nazis are gone now but their Arab allies are still going after the Jews in whatever way they can and the British government is as cowardly as ever when it comes to the Arabs.
They make excuses about sympathy for “Palestinians,” but it’s garbage.
@ Rodan:
The Brits have a love hate thing with the Arab.They represent their version of the noble savage.Being notorious Jew haters doesn’t hurt either.
@ Nevergiveup:
@ Speranza:
Thanks for that. It’s just the whole British leftist obsession with Palestinaisn is just insane.
Yeah that is a great line. Your flounce though was worthy of a Nobel &
drove Husky Blogger out of his mind.
@ RIX:
That was our snork I believe.
Nevergiveup wrote:
That is the way I see it, though I would use the word hate in place of like.
@ Eliana:
Well said, wonderful post.
@ chickadee:
Lynn Redgrave seemed very upbeat. Her sister Vanessa seems dark & takes
herself sooooooo seriously.
@ vagabond trader:
@ Eliana:
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Thanks for your answers. It was just one of those things that never made sense. But you guys explained it very well.
<b>vagabond trader wrote:
Outstanding line with more than a little truth.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
And for being made fools of by ignoring the warning from the Irgun about the King David Hotel.
Come to think of it, they do have a history of ignoring dire warnings, don’t they?
@ Speranza:
Plus they and the French consider the ME to be their personal playgrounds and have never gotten over losing their place as the worlds most powerful countries.
@ Eliana:
And the American Jews’ infallible Maximum Leader FDR wasn’t a whole lot better in that regard.
By the way, while the British were all but stopping Jewish immigration into the Palestine Mandate in 1939 and beyond, they INCREASED Arab immigration into the Palestine Mandate as much as they could.
Britain was trying to prevent a Jewish state from being formed by stacking the deck with as many Arabs as possible while millions and millions of Jews were being murdered in Europe as a result of being blocked by Britain from going to the future state of Israel.
Thus, the British not only bear a huge amount of responsibility for the extent of the Holocaust, but they also bear a huge amount of the responsibility for the whole issue of the “Palestinians.”
Many of these “refugees” were Arabs allowed in by the British in the 30s and 40s to help make a Jewish state impossible.
@ Rodan:
I think they also resent the success Israelis/Jews have had in putting together a thriving modern country out of the Brits former colonial backwater.
@ snork:
Agreed.
@ snork:
Yes,still educating my older brother on that little factoid,lot of multi generational denial there. At least he is no longer a democrat.
snork wrote:
All this talk about FDR ( and don’t forget our State Department), the British and the holocaust really gets me mad and sad. The world didn’t give a shit back then and they are on the way to not giving a shit today. The more things change, the more they stay the same—With one GIANT exception. Today there is a State Of ISRAEL to defend itself and Jews around the world.
@ Nevergiveup:
Yes! Plus,many more American Jews are well armed.
Just another example of a very strange subservience he has to cj.
Carry on!
Nevergiveup wrote:
Which brings up that case in the school in California where the kids with the American flags were told to go home. WHY AREN’T THE MEXICAN KIDS AND THEIR ENABLERS ACCUSED OF DUAL LOYALTY???
@ typicalwhitey:
He has taken up the top ass massager title discarded by sharmutta.The new queen of Nancy butt kissing, Dark Falcon.
@ vagabond trader:
I find it very strange!
maybe Israel should just move to Uganda.
@ typicalwhitey:
Most remaining at the Bedlam are suffering from a combo disorder of Stockholm Syndrome and repressed masochistic tendencies. The rest just dig comic book threads. imho of course.
@ Rorschach:
snork wrote:
Quite concur. He felt that since he had the Jewish vote in his pocket, why bother going out of his way to save Jews?
Rorschach wrote:
Wrath is that you?
Actually there once as a plan on the table for a Jewish homeland in Uganda.