But not Hollywood, or at least the portion of it in which Robert Redford and his colleagues on the new film The Company You Keep which takes up the theme of a ’60s radical still on the lam 30 years after his crimes. The willingness of Redford to promote the fraudulent premise that these radicals were true patriots rather than murderous thugs cannot be excused by artistic license. Nor should it go unanswered. To claim, as he did on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program today, that the tale of the Weathermen trying to evade justice is a new version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, isn’t merely a movie absurdity. It is the worst sort of historical revisionism that ought to bring down on the former heartthrob’s head the sort of opprobrium that was once reserved for Jane Fonda.
The film is loosely based on the events of the real life 1981 Brinks robbery in Nyack, N.Y. in which a gang of radicals who had been previously involved in Weathermen bombings murdered two police officers and a security guard while stealing $1.6 million to fund their activities. Michelle Malkin’s takedown of the film is a must read, as is our John Podhoretz’s column in today’s New York Post about Kathy Boudin, the getaway driver in the Brinks case.Boudin was eventually caught and served 22 years in jail before being sprung after some artful lies about her violent career to a credulous parole board. But after her release, she has become, like Bill Ayers, another former Weathermen who was friendly with Barack Obama before he became a presidential candidate, a petted idol of the academic world. As John writes, Columbia University’s decision to name the unrepentant killer an adjunct professor of social work is nothing less than a disgrace.