Actor Woody Harrelson drew much scorn from the liberal elite after he blasted Big Pharma in a scathing monologue last week as host of “Saturday Night Live.”
So what’d he do? Double down, of course.
Harrelson — who describes himself as an “anarchist, Marxist, ethical hedonist, non-discriminatory empath, epistemological deconstructionist Texan” — ripped the ongoing COVID-19 protocols put in place for movie making in the early days of the pandemic.
“Now to get an indie done? Especially with all the Covid protocols — which, to me, are rather absurd. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Harrelson said in an interview with The New York Times.
The Times, which has been pitching everything from mandatory masks to nationwide lockdowns, just had to know: “What’s absurd about the Covid protocols?”
“The fact that they’re still going on!” Harrelson said. “I don’t think that anybody should have the right to demand that you’re forced to do the testing, forced to wear the mask and forced to get vaccinated three years on. I’m just like, Let’s be done with this nonsense. It’s not fair to the crews. I don’t have to wear the mask. Why should they? Why should they have to be vaccinated? How’s that not up to the individual?”
Harrelson knew that liberal heads would surely explode. “I shouldn’t be talking about this [expletive]. It makes me angry for the crew. The anarchist part of me, I don’t feel that we should have forced testing, forced masking and forced vaccination. That’s not a free country. Really I’m talking about the crew. Because I can get out of wearing a mask. I can test less. I’m not in the same position they’re in, but it’s wrong. It’s three years. Stop.”
On SNL, Harrelson told a story about smoking cannabis in New York City’s Central Park and reading “the craziest script” for a movie pitch.
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“So the movie goes like this,” he said. “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes.”
“And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over. I threw the script away,” he joked. “I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day long.”
The Washington Post was incensed, and published a piece with the headline: “On SNL, Woody Harrelson pushes popular covid-19 conspiracy theory.” Of course, the liberal papers went right to the naysayers.
“‘Thank you, @nbcsnl, for Woody Harrelson’s insipid anti-vax monologue. Who are [you] going to have guest host next week, Scott Baio? Rob Schneider? Kevin Sorbo? Maybe invite Kanye back while you’re at it,’ wrote Twitter user Lee Goldberg. Another viewer asked: ‘Does #SNL think just harmless noise? Normalizing #antivaxx conspiracies does real harm!'”
One Twitterer mocked the MSM getting all wee-weed up.
Woody Harrelson nailed it and Im having fun watching the media prove him right 😂👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/FlvbiezUr6
— Spitfire (@DogRightGirl) February 26, 2023
But over the last few weeks, much of the COVID-19 protocol narrative has taken a hit. The New York Times published a piece titled “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” It was penned by Bret Stephens, an opinion columnist with the Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2013.
“The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.”
“‘There is just no evidence that they’ — masks — ‘make any difference,’ he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. ‘Full stop.’”
Then a report came out from researchers who had examined the efficacy of citywide COVID vaccine mandates implemented across the United States in 2021 and found — meh.
“These mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners,” the researchers said in a study conducted by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “We find no evidence that the announcement or implementation of indoor vaccine mandates in the cities listed had any significant effect on vaccine uptake, COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19 deaths, and this is largely consistent for all US cities that implemented the mandate,” the researchers wrote.
And a “COVID Vaccine Surveillance Report” released late last month by the UK Health Security Agency found that 92% of the COVID deaths in the United Kingdom in March were people who were fully vaccinated.
So, maybe Harrelson is on to something.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.