Just when Bill Murray was starting to put the cool back in party crashing, he joined the ranks of the pro-gun control parade by comparing the Parkland protesters to the “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh” chanting college hippies of the Vietnam War era.
Say it ain’t so, Bill.
Writing an op-ed for NBC News, the former “Ghostbusters” actor said we live in “interesting times” and then propped up high school students who haven’t yet spent time in the real world (celebrities can relate) as great arbiters of moral authority because they still have their “idealism.”
“The thing that’s so powerful about students is that, when you haven’t had your idealism broken yet, you’re able to speak from a place that has no confusion, where there is a clear set of values,” says Murray.
Murray then likened the Parkland protesters to the Vietnam War protesters, apparently unaware that the ragingly anti-American protests that celebrated communist maniacs only increased support for the war.
“I was thinking, looking at the kids in Parkland, Florida who have started these anti-gun protests, that it really was the students that began the end of the Vietnam War,” Murray said. “It was the students who made all the news, and that noise started, and then the movement wouldn’t stop.”
Murray portrayed the politically motivated withdrawal from Vietnam War (which the U.S. won militarily) as a great success for the world; he probably should have looked up the numbers of South Vietnamese and Cambodians who died brutal deaths as a result of American withdrawal from the region.
“You’ve got to surround a deeply political issue like gun control or a war, to come at it from every single direction,” Murray said.”You can’t just focus on one thing, or aim for just the one goal. Ending the Vietnam war was not a simple thing, either: You had to make sure that all our people were safe; we had to make sure that they were as safe that you could be.”
“For children to be concerned about going to school, worried about what could happen to them at school, that makes for a horrible moment. It’s just a horrible place for us to be at,” he said. “The thing that’s so powerful about students is that, when you haven’t had your idealism broken yet, you’re able to speak from a place that has no confusion, where there is a clear set of values.”
He continued, “But there are idealists left over the age of 18, I’m sure of it. Idealism is a voice that’s inside of you; it’s your conscience. That can really deteriorate along the way, depending on the road that you follow, and it can become almost dysfunctional, but it’s there. Everyone has it. Sometimes it’s just a whisper, but, in some people, it’s a shout.”
Party-crashing Bill is a lot more pleasant than social justice Bill. As President Trump would say: Sad!