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Not the Dim Bulb She Played

Justine Bateman comes out swinging.

Justine Bateman: Thinking for herself. The Good Oil. Photoshop by Lushington Brady.

I always caution about paying attention to celebrity opinions, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, most of them aren’t that intelligent. Even Anthony Hopkins admits it: ‘Actors are pretty stupid’. Secondly, they’re groupthinkers supreme. You’d be hard pressed to find a more sheep-like bunch of people outside of an old Soviet commissariat. Mostly because they’re terrified of being one ‘wrong’ opinion away from their careers evaporating in a fug of hashtags.

Justine Bateman made her name playing the absurdly dumb Mallory on ’80s sitcom Family Ties, but in reality she’s pretty damn smart. Despite being basically forbidden from going to college by Paramount Studios, who owned her Family Ties contract, Bateman went on to become a writer. Like Groucho Marx, who left school at 12, she became a pretty good one. Her first full-length book, Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, is a lengthy dissertation on celebrity culture. Bateman also refuses to indulge in cosmetic surgery: “I just don’t give a shit. I think I look rad. I think my face represents who I am. I like it.”

What really sets her apart and potentially makes her worth paying at least some attention to is that she is clearly not scared of swimming against the tide of celebrity orthodoxy. Sure, in Fame, she comes across as more-or-less lefty-lite, but she’s long shown signs of a fiercely independent mind. She quit the board of the Screen Actors Guild, blasting it and AFTRA as ‘scumbag’ unions. “What is this? Communist China or tumultuous Iran?” she said.

But it’s in the wake of the LA wildfires that Bateman has really come out swinging against the Democrat leadership of California. When Gavin Newsom sent out a faux-outraged tweet about looting, Bateman slammed him back.

You and Gascon and Bass sent out the invitations long ago to all criminals to come to CA and LA and practice their “craft.” You boasted that you would not prosecute rioters, trespassers, looters, shoplifters, etc. And they came. From other states, from other countries. You created a hostile living environment for all of us. That anyone thinks they can loot and commit arson in Los Angeles or anywhere in CA with impunity is because YOU made sure they got an invitation.

She had even harsher words for Newsom later:

When Newsom bitched about Trump’s nickname for him – “I remember the guy who called me Newscum in 7th grade” – Bateman replied, “Sounds like even at 13 years-old, people noticed something insincere about you.”

Even Ann Coulter retweeted that broadside.

She has also described the Biden administration as ‘an almost intolerable period’.

A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of “permitted positions” in order to assess acceptability. I’ve never in my life known that to be an American environment […]

Those that tried to impose that control maintained a kind of “hall monitor” position by threatening others with damning labels like “Sexist,” “racist,” “homophobic,” etc, when the free-thinking and questioning was nothing of the sort.

Bateman rounded off that broadside with a link to Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

In other tweets, she has begged to know “if anyone filed the paperwork to start the recall of Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. Let us know the signing locations.”

She has even, shock, horror, tweeted positive words about the Bad Orange Man:

“In America, impossible is what we do best” – President Trump. That was the best line from the inauguration.

Still, we were apparently denied a cure for cancer, thanks to the vigilance of Justine’s ‘people’. As David Cole recalls, an acquaintance of his had the low-level job of filtering Bateman’s Family Ties-era fan mail, some of which was “ugly. Rape fantasies, S&M, fecal fetishes.”

I recall one letter from a guy claiming to be a doctor who said he’d discovered the cure for cancer but he’d only share it with the world if Bateman would blow him […]

follow Justine Bateman on X. We may have been robbed of a cancer cure because of her, but her tweets are decent compensation.

Especially her brilliantly brutal response to Harry’n’Meghan’s self-serving disaster tourism.


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