Media Won't Punish Sarandon for 'Nazi' Comments, Audiences Will

Remember when Hank Williams Jr. was a horrible human being because he analogized Obama’s golf game with John Boehner to a golf game between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Of course you do; it resulted in his ‘Monday Night Football’ opener being pulled by ESPN.

That, of course, was their right, although they didn’t use similar discretion when some of their local radio hosts allowed Mike Tyson to fantasize about Sarah Palin being raped.

Where’s the reaction to Susan Sarandon calling the pope a Nazi? Perhaps you didn’t hear about that one, because she’s a Hollywood celebrity rather than a conservative country singer – and because Hollywood celebrities are usually granted full leeway to say idiotic things. In fact, Benedict served in the Hitler Youth unwillingly and was never a Nazi Party member. He deserted before the end of World War II and turned himself over to the Americans.

Now, I disagree with the Pope on a wide variety of issues: he received anti-Semitic priest Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk in 2007, he made a rather rotten speech at Auschwitz in May 2006, he was slow to respond to a British-born bishop who denied the Holocaust, and his perspective on the Middle East conflict is problematic.

Nonetheless, he has stood tall against terror on many occasions, and he has criticized in strong terms both moral relativism and radical Islam.

So what prompted the Nazi reference by Sarandon?

Nothing. She just made it, as though it were perfectly obvious to everyone that the Pope is worthy of total disdain. This from a woman whose idea of fun is being on the receiving end of projectile vomit.

Will the media decry her in the same way it did Hank Williams Jr.? Of course not. The good news is that the public probably will. As we’ve detailed over and over on Big Hollywood, Americans aren’t fond of stars who take advantage of our goodwill to be outrageously liberal. Sarandon will surely feel the brunt of these comments at her next box office appearance.