{"id":12509,"date":"2013-10-29T07:58:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T11:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=12509"},"modified":"2013-10-29T10:43:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-29T14:43:09","slug":"russell-brand-should-be-ashamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/10\/29\/russell-brand-should-be-ashamed\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell Brand should be ashamed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Actor<\/a>

Actor and comedian Russell Brand. Photo: Brian Solis<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

The British actor and comedian Russell Brand is blowing up these days on liberal websites and in viral Facebook memes for giving his impassioned argument against voting.<\/p>\n

In an interview for BBC’s Newsnight, Brand defended his role as a guest editor of the magazine the New Statesmen, despite the fact that he doesn’t participate in his nation’s long-running democratic traditions.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, no, I don’t vote,” he said.\u00a0 “I don’t get my authority from this pre-existing paradigm that his quite narrow and only serves a few people.”<\/p>\n

In the conversation, Brand comes off so smug, privileged and blitheringly ignorant that the interview would be of little interest, except for the fact that not voting is such a fetish among liberals.<\/p>\n

For years — decades, really — guys like Brand have argued that good old fashioned ballot boxes just aren’t revolutionary enough.<\/p>\n