The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate: Tim Robbins on the Dissing of Dissent

April 19, 2003

Tim Robbins on the Dissing of Dissent

Actor and director Tim Robbins, one of the most prominent of the Hollywood anti-war activists, gave a speech recently at the National Press Club, about speaking out, the dissing of dissent, and the overall climate of the nation since 9-11. It's quite good.

Here's the video (Real Player media format) from ConnectLive.

The audio is available here from NPR.

The text transcript appears to be pretty much everywhere -- here it is on the "progressive" site CommonDreams.org.

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently cancelled an event that was intended to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the release of the film "Bull Durham", which co-starred, among others, Tim Robbins and his now-wife Susan Sarandon. Tim's speech is inspired by that occurence, but expands into a discussion of the many ways that dissent is being harshly reprimanded. One anecdote is about his 11-year-old nephew, who was told by his school teacher that Susan Sarandon was endangering the troops by opposing the war. He had the courage to speak up in her defense, which prompted prompt backpedaling on the part of the teacher. That anecdote ties into the main point which Tim wants to drive home in his speech which is, in short, "Challenge those who would silence those who dissent."

In researching this post, I found this 1998 article on the Baseball Hall of Fame's website, applauding Tim Robbins for donating his Bull Durham uniform to the museum. Tim lavishes praise on the museum, and they lavish praise back on him. Times have changed.

Here's the letter the Hall sent to Tim un-inviting him to the recent celebration, along with Tim's response.

Here's an editorial excoriating the Hall for politicizing baseball and its own institution.

Posted by Lance Brown at April 19, 2003 11:59 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Hi Lance,

I found this site by typing "Tim Robbins June 2003" on Google. Great site! I look forward to reading more articles on it when I have a chance. Great page on Tim Robbins (i.e., his speech and references to Cooperstown). I also found it interesting that you had listed the quote which I have on a bumper sticker ("The best way to predict the future is to invent it."). I think my sticker says "create it" instead of "invent it". Thanks for listing the author of the quote.

Lynn M.

Posted by: Lynn Madar at May 13, 2003 08:37 PM