Not Useful, Just an Idiot

Behold the beautiful people, Hollywood gentility, blue blooded, empty-headed, imbeciles, idiots. 

Ay me! She speaks!

"Give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass" 

(Gwyneth Paltrow, speaking at a fund raiser at her house for Barack Obama).

I wanted to include her in my (growing) list of "useful idiots," but Paltrow strikes me as nothing more than a foolish, fatuous, vacuous, unschooled, ignorant person, so I didn't want to dignify her with the designation. Now, though, reading this article by Steve McCann, published a couple of years ago, I suppose I should go ahead and upgrade her status to "useful." As McCann explains, the term "useful idiot" was coined "by the leaders of the Soviet Union to describe those in the West who naively promoted the cause of Russian Communism when in reality they were held in contempt and were being cynically used by the Soviet hierarchy." Now, he remarks, the term aptly applies to "a vast swath of citizens in the United States who have been cynically used by the hardcore left for a cause they are unwilling to understand." He continues: 

Among the mysteries confronting those of us who have immigrated to the United States from countries that have experienced the devastating outcome of socialist/Marxist ideology [McCann apparently came to America as a child in 1952, but I don't know from where], is why seemingly successful and educated people could be so easily swayed to support those whose end-game is to transform the country into a socialist "utopia" and to control the day-to-day lives of all Americans. Among these "useful idiots" are a seeming majority of the Jewish population as well as many in business, and nearly all in the entertainment industry.

So yes, Ms. Paltrow, it appears you are, in fact, a useful idiot after all, along with Maxine Waters and Ben Affleck. 

Speaking of Affleck, I wonder what his thoughts were today about the Islamists he defends with such ardor as he read in today's Los Angeles Times that Islamic State proudly justifies "forcing ethnic Yazidi women into sexual slavery--a practice they say is encouraged under Islamic [Sharia] law" and that the group "exults in the enslavement and rape of women from the Yazidi religious minority captured in Iraq after their husbands or fathers were killed or taken prisoner." Comments, sir? 

"Islamic State Publication Seeks to Justify Slavery and Sexual Abuse" (by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2014).