From the LAT via Keith Olbermann’s newsletter today:
In his first-ever commencement speech, Warren Beatty — an Oscar-winning actor-director and liberal citizen-activist — “derided the governor for ‘his reactionary right-wing agenda,’ ‘his bullying of labor and the little guy,’ his plan to spend money on a “totally unnecessary special election” and his refusal to raise taxes on the rich.”
More from the LAT:
“Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Governor, you’re no Kennedy Democrat.”
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Over the weekend, Beatty, 68, gave his first commencement speech ever to the graduating class of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and used the occasion to humorously but witheringly attack Schwarzenegger — much like the candid candidate Jay Billington Bulworth from his 1998 political satire.
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Within hours, Beatty, a blue-chip Hollywood figure famous for 46 years, was swatted down by the Schwarzenegger team. The governor’s communication director, Robert Stutzman, dismissed him as a “crackpot.”
“I don’t think that that’s the most intelligent response for Arnold to have his people give,” Beatty muses a couple of days later, though he seems jazzed by his return to the public policy limelight. “I guess I needed to say some of those things.”