I don’t know whether this story will resonate here, but there’s such infrequent opportunity to talk about Russell Brand that I cannot resist. He’s been inactive on the gossip front lately because he’s been dating the same lady, Jemima Khan, for nine whole months. They both showed their cleaves on a recent red carpet date. He never dates the same person that long without putting a ring on it, so it must be serious.
Rusty’s getting political again. He’s an eloquent public speaker who has testified in front of parliament and schooled clueless morning show hosts. I don’t always agree with him — such as when he’s busily telling people how voting doesn’t matter — but I always appreciate the way he speaks.
Russell’s latest public speech involved a demonstration against recent austerity measures in the UK where poverty is on the rise as budgets are slashed. He joined the People’s Assembly to protest these government cuts. Don’t ask me why he ripped off his usual uniform, a burnout t-shirt, to make this point:
Russell Brand has staged a “topless protest” in London’s Parliament Square. The comedian, who is famed for his political rhetoric, has called for a “peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution.” He was participating in a march marking the one-year anniversary of the formation of the People’s Assembly.
50,000 people took part in the march and Brand was joined by several speakers who included comedian and commentator Mark Steel, MP Caroline Lucas and journalist Owen Jones.
Brand called for the public to seize power from the political establishment, claiming that MPs no longer represented the people. “The people of this building (the House of Commons) generally speaking do not represent us, they represent their friends in big business,” he said.
“It’s time for us to take back our power. This will be a peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution and I’m very grateful to be involved in the People’s Assembly. Power isn’t there (in the House of Commons), it is here, within us. The revolution that’s required isn’t a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have.”
As the crowd gathered around him, Brand stripped off his T-shirt and acquiesced to demands to replace it with another bearing the slogan “Firefighters rescue people not bankers. See, I’ve given you even my vanity,” he said.
Meanwhile, the star has been derided for being a hypocrite in view of his own lavish lifestyle. X Factor judge and music mogul Simon Cowell reportedly said the comic actor should give away his fortune as part of his revolutionary plans.
Brand explained: “I obviously face accusations of being part of the 1% (of the country’s wealthy elite) myself but I wasn’t designed in a laboratory with Jimmy Carr and Adele, I’m from Grays in Essex. Where I grew up I felt there were low expectations.”
[From IB Times]
The People’s Assembly has an ambitious goal: To stage the largest protest in British history later this year. Russell insists that “soon we will reach a size and influence where neither the BBC nor this austerity Government will be able to ignore us.” Maybe that was the point of Rusty ripping off his shirt. For attention. I’m joking about this, but austerity is such a complicated subject that presents a wealth of emotions on both sides. People rip on Russell being a millionaire and campaigning against the UK’s political system, but he puts his money where his mouth is. Rusty is active in a number of charities, and he has a point here. There is a problem when government cuts are being made, but Will and Kate’s $4 million palace renovation remains a priority.
Photos courtesy of WENN
I still don’t understand what he saw in Katy Perry, other than boobs…I still flashbacks to when she described (in a video interview) what feminism was….she talks like my boy obsessed, 14 year old sister…
It baffled me, too. She must have a rhapsodic rack.
I mean, a nice rack can only get you so far. I don’t understand it. I can understand being mesmerized for a few ‘dates’, but after that? I mean, maybe he thought he was getting with someone who was more caring and sweet, than intelligent/had common sense, but still…..
There are boobs everywhere. I’m guessing RB was attracted to other stuff-like her ass. God only knows, and I don’t want to. She is dumber than a box of styrofoam peanuts.
She probably didn’t talk much, let him do all the talking, he thought ‘wow she’s so mysterious and deep, man’. Yes, I think he was disappointed when he found out. And yes, she does have a nice rack but the rest of her body…no
just because someone may be intelligent and well spoken does not mean that that person looks for that in a mate. we dont hear any stories of him having a huge appetite for discussions with smart women, we hear about a large appetite for sex.
Well, he never married any of them before, right? So what made her different?
•VG•
She might very well be smart. A lot of ‘good girls’ hide their intelligence because they are told it scares off boys.
I could totally be wrong though but I guess there’s a lot more behind that façade than meets the eye.
To be fair to Rusty, I think he’s misunderstood about the voting thing. What he was actually saying that if you live in an oligarchy (as he thinks Western countries are) then there’s no point in voting because candidates are basically the same as one another with such minor distinctions as to be trivial. And all your choices are for functionaries committed to maintaining the oligarchy’s hierarchy. I mean, you can agree or disagree with that, but I don’t think he was trying to say that voting as a principle is never worthwhile.
I can’t help but like him, even when he’s saying/doing things I completely disagree with.
I can’t say what his intentions were for that statement, but I agree whole-heartedly with the assessment that an oligarchy structure has arisen and is firmly in place, and not just in the UK, in the US also. The vote of the individual means significantly less that the policies driven behind the scenes through money, and who actually gets to hit the big stage in elections. So in that sense, you are given candidates that ruling/wealthy class allows you to choose from. And those candidates have already been vetted to be ‘in the bag’ so to speak, for the oligarch.
+ 1, I’m just going to follow you today since you’re saying what I think better than I can.
Me, too.
•kiddo•
Totally agree.
I do not see the primaries like that, although big business does. I think that it just proves the point of our founding fathers, that the masses need to be educated in order to rightly exercise a vote.
I can see that Obama did many of the things that he promised – end the war in Afghanistan, and despite the best efforts of the republican party, Obama-care (The Affordable Care Act), is successful. He’s been very prudent about war, and he is commander-in-chief. He did give a shout out about Occupy Wall Street. I believe that he has marked income inequality as being an agenda that American people need to understand, so their vote counts, because they were informed by other than political ads. Our form of government cannot succeed without the will of the people. As much as there is to complain about, we are also very fortunate.
I agree with you Sixer, and I also agree with him. It’s unfortunate, that even in the US, third parties can run but never really have a chance, and picking between the reps and dens is always choosing the lesser of two evils. Russell does enough charity for me to believe he does his share for his fortune, but it irritated me during the occupy movement to see so many 1% movie stars fighting the good fight, especially when they started capitalizing on it ala Jay-z occupy shirt.
I am with you, Sixer. I like his thinking, and his eloquence. And he does his bit for charity.
He took off one shirt to put on another, as the quoted article states and the photos here exhibit.
I agree with his points on the oligarchy structure. It was so frustrating in our recent EU and local elections. We have the 3 main parties and while I saw the largest number of independents I have seen, we seem as a nation to just bounce from one major party to another. The party that caused all the issues in our economy through corruption, greed and general ignorance seem to be making a comeback because people are so fed up with the current party’s way of dealing with the fallout.
We have very short memories and it saddens me.
I know and I agree on the voting thing too.
The agenda of Mitt Romney would have been entirely different than that of Barack Obama. Seriously, do you think that Mitt would ever have campaigned for gay rights? He definitely would have worked for the 1%, and probably put us into war, not to mention that he would have continued to resist/resent the 47% that he spoke of so contemptuously during his campaign. John McCain, the republican senator who Barack was running against, during his first election for president, has called for military interventions over and over, since then. And just sayin’, those old white men senators were not too happy to see a black man in office – which I believe has been the main contributor of gridlock in Congress – that is, their need to resist him… On the whole though, it does seem as though special interests are paying to buy votes.
Pres. Obama has done a lot for the “common” man, as well as regulating for the environment. Voting does matter. My son and I were proud of the big numbers for Barack, and could count 2 of that number as being us!
@wolfpup – In regards to Mitt Romney, while I have no doubt he would have continuously worked in favor of the 1%, I’m unsure if he would have plunged the US into war so easily. He’s SUCH a “flip-flopper” and an opportunist. He said things to seem like the bid bad patriot then, but in office he would have been entirely different. The US is fatigued from war, I don’t think even he would be that stupid.The only things I believed about Mitt was that he loved his family, he loved his faith, and that he was shrewd and calculating.
Wolfpup I agree that Barack is very different in some ways, but as much as I love him, he’s protected Wall Street, despite Wall Street’s greedy efforts to run our country into the ground. Where the Justice Department could have prosecuted those guys up one side and down the other, they looked the other way instead. Those banks and brokers still hold too much power with too much risk for their reserves. But they’re big money, so they’re protected.
Elizabeth Warren represents more of a change than Barack and the rest of the Democratic Party does, but I don’t think she’ll get very far.
I agree with a lot of what Russell says, as far as the US goes. It is often the choice between the lesser of two evils with our two parties, unfortunately.
•Sixer•
The more I read the more I think he’s spot on with all the hidden oligarchies.
And it’s scary — how is a democracy really a democracy when the people truly in power are hidden and aren’t accountable to anyone or anything?
So as far as I can tell, the fact that I’m living in a country that has democratically elected government government is 100% an illusion.
I thought you’d be along to say that, missy!
I’m also sympathetic to this point of view, as you know. Stats on wealth distribution and social mobility don’t lie.
Having said that, and with the UK and with what Brand is saying – which is, to a large extent, talking about why the young are disenchanted with politics and don’t vote – I have to say that it *would* make a difference. Under UK austerity, the old have been basically a protected group. Why? Because they vote. And they vote mostly for the current incumbents. If the young had voted en masse, we would have seen a much more equitable distribution of austerity measures, which have hit them above all.
So I’m in agreement with the big picture but perhaps not with all the details.
Sixer, yep, that’s exactly what he meant by not voting, and it annoys me that so many people think he’s promoting “apathy” — far from it! He’s actually saying we should do something MORE than voting, because voting is easy and doesn’t change anything. Whether one agrees with that concept or not, that’s another issue but I wish people would stop misinterpreting what he meant.
And yeah, the “stripping at the protest” stories are all skewed too. I have a friend who was a volunteer at the rally, and she said the media in attendance barely showed any interest in the other speakers (i.e., they didn’t care about the message) but then went crazy snapping pics when RB changed into the other t-shirt (which was meant to show support for the cause on the tshirt). Then all the news outlets picked up the pics of him in mid-shirt change and wrote it up as “Russell strips off!” — totally taking it out of context. Sigh, what else is new, right?
He’s doing something. He is right. If it requires exhibitionism to get the media’s attention, so be it. He is doing it for a cause.
I whole-heartedly agree.
As I said up there, the article says he took one shirt off to put on a “firefighters” t-shirt someone handed him. See the photos too.
But even if done for the cause that would have been ok. One has to attract the media to get the eyes and ears sometimes.
Did he take off his short to make himself look more like Jesus?
In the article and in the pictures above, it says he took off his tshirt to put on another one with a slogan that firefighters save people not bankers=alluding to the austerity cuts to public services [presumably, the UK cuts include firefighter budgets].
The cuts we have are all mainly to the public sectors so police, the NHS and the fire service ect, but its the Tories I wouldn’t expect any different.
Nothing but love and admiration for him. The hypocracy of government is something that people have railed against for generations (and probably always will), and I think the Brits have a worthy champion in Rusty.
Government is supposed to be “of the people and for the people”, and when it is no longer serving it’s purpose, it’s past time to think about changing the system. Our own attempt at peaceful revolution (occupy Wall Street) devolved into a chaotic mess…there wasn’t a cohesive vision or message for anyone to rally around. And frankly, it was much more annoying to the “regular people” who work down in the financial district, than it was to the ultra wealthy, who were hardly inconvenienced at all.
Anyway, I hope this one is more successful. Good luck!
I don’t think he’s being anti-government – that’s anarchy and no one in their right mind goes there. I think he’s being anti-austerity.
The trouble is he gets the headline “Russell Brand declares revolution” trending because he is so liquid/florid with his prose and the media reports a literal misinterpretation. If he does want to be some sort of figurehead this is going to be an ongoing problem. What makes him inspiring/great as a speaker is also his downfall with black and white media reportage.
They don’t grab any of the down to earth, sensible stuff he says, just the excitable phrases. And I’m not even talking about the political opposition. His style is great for some movements but for this one it could be a hindrance for people easily frightened or confused by the language he uses. That said it is refreshing, I cringe at a lot of celebrity activism but he is obviously a smart guy who feels passionately about this and unlike most British celebs doesn’t just swan off to America and abandon the homeland entirely. Britain is a mess right now, the gov’t has really punished the disabled and poor, the disabled in particular is sickening considering the prime minister had a disabled child himself.
I think that a cohesive message has to evolve as more and more people become aware of economic inequality. I wish it could be like the 60’s when George Harrison, John Lennon, and other artists were writing songs that we rallied around. Peace. Love. Brotherhood of Man. Woodstock. There have to be some freedom songs that are just as compelling. There has to be ongoing dialogues, and meaningful engagement with the issue. If there is one mind amongst the people; we will prevail. History has taught us this time and again. Cynicism can be a way of setting down the ball.
He gets people’s attention and I think people in the UK want to hear someone voicing the opinions he does
Yeah, he mentioned the t-shirt as it had a good cause on it and was given to him, the crowd then egged him on to take off his shirt and put it on (not that Russell needed much persuading!)
I loved what he said when they accused him of hypocrisy:
“Some people say I’m a hypocrite because I’ve got money now. When I was poor and I complained about inequality people said I was bitter, now I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want inequality on the agenda because it is a real problem that needs to be addressed.”
Also, I quite like Owen Jones.
great quote
+1
Owen Jones is fab his book is really good.
He’s my number one celebrity dong. I don’t even care that he frequently looks unwashed (I care a little), I don’t care that he married Katy Perry (but she’s so vapid), it’s just his damn words and smarts. He’s actually feminist and cares about the people and swoooon.
•Detricus•
I thought he was gross until I watched a ‘comedy’ special of his. I’m pretty sure he’s a bona fide genius (confirmed for me, after reading several things he wrote) and a wordsmith.
Genius wordsmiths, my kryponite every d@mn frickin’ time! Lol
(I’ll just close my eyes…hehe)
If it makes you feel any better, I think the “looking unwashed” thing is more a result of him simply having long hair and a beard, plus a kind of bohemian style, than him actually being unwashed. His hygiene is perfectly fine and he smells nice (I know from meeting him a few times!). 🙂
Well if he pisses off Simon Cowbell, I’m on his side. His YouTube channel is gold.
Last I read, he cancelled a show bc his beloved mum was diagnosed with cancer. Haven’t heard any updates. Hope she is well! Love Rusty!
Eloquent or not – if you refuse to vote I no longer care what you have to say.
If you don’t like any of the candidates, what do you do?
Write in Mickey Mouse.
Make a point. But exercise your rights – otherwise you lose them. Between suffrage and Jim Crow people in the US have struggled for the right – and I just can’t respect people who toss it aside like it is nothing.
Read a few of his essays and he’s actually pretty smart. Entertaining too!
I really don’t like this guy.
I had no idea they were still dating; thought they’d broken up shortly after getting together. Well, they’re an excellent match.
And yeah, he probably ripped off his shirt to get on the media; interestingly, it failed to work. The BBC did not see fit to mention the protest. The lefty Guardian did, but what can you say about a broadcaster that fails to report a demonstration with 50,000 protestors practically on its doorstep?