At some point in this very liberal to very very liberal generational procession, you're somewhere that's not properly called "liberal." If you reach "another level," you need a new word. I've heard enough lefties use the word "liberal" as a term of scorn. But here we're talking about a mother admiring her daughter and keen on ending her statement with an affirmation that the daughter is what she "should be" and mother is "glad."
April 26, 2023
"She’s very liberal. I mean, I’m very liberal, but she’s another level. Which she should be, and I’m glad."
Says Molly Ringwald, about her 13-year-old daughter, with whom she would find it too uncomfortable to watch "The Breakfast Club."
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Too liberal for words…
Her complaints make her sound just like very privileged and out of touch rich white girl that she played in the Breakfast Club.
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy."
- Orwell 1984
She'll be glad right up to the point where her pruh-gruh-suv daugher turns her in and she's taken away. At night. Never to be heard from again. Her movies banned. Her book destroyed.
Not a new thought on my end. It's a scene that has repeated itself as Lefties continue their evolution loop. They never quite get to Utopia. Instead they destroy the culture they live in, then destroy themselves. The culture grows back. Lefties grow back. And the loop repeats.
Speaking of actresses from the 80s, I highly recommend the new Brooke Shields documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. She seems to have navigated her life very well.
"Very liberal" becomes authoritarian and indistinguishable from "very conservative." See the standard ideology circle diagram below:
http://factmyth.com/the-left-right-political-spectrum-explained/
This is Political Science 101, and the ignorance of children in lefty or righty Generation 2 and 3 about what "liberal" and "conservative" actually mean leads to inevitable pendulum swings and rotations between parties.
Naïve Molly is likely raising someone who'd have previously been in the Hitler Youth. Brown Shirts, Green Shirts, what's the difference?
Most people would use the newfound word, libtard. It encompasses those who are so liberal and oblivious to common sense that they make the naturally retarded look like geniuses.
So she is a woke progressive. Stay away if you know what is good for you, because she will blame you for everything that she feels is wrong in the world.
I'm guilty of not always distinguishing between liberals and leftists. I try to do better as I know leftists hate liberals as much as they hate me, but the two groups still vote together, so there's a strong element of "screw them." Molly Ringwald falls in there somewhere. Especially when she disrespects John Hughes, the man who made her career and her fortune. Screw her.
But I think I can understand what she's saying about her daughter. Kids are supposed to be simplistically idealistic. That's the whole point of the "if you're conservative at 20, you have no heart..." saying. There are no wisdom prodigies. A good fully formed upstanding citizen starts off liberal because they are good and don't know better and they move right as they age and gain experience of the world. Hopefully without losing that fundamental decency that dominated their thinking when they were a child.
I'm not saying Ringwald is hoping her daughter becomes conservative later, but I am saying that I agree with her that kids should be liberal--when they're too young to do any damage with their silly ideas.
My kids always called her "Molly Ringworm". The Breakfast Club was the only one of her movies they liked.
...and, as Mollie sinks into total irrelevancy,...
I quit using "Liberal" to denote Leftists years ago. There's nothing liberal about them. Nothing.
I found it interesting that none of our usual Leftist friends here (unless you want to include Chuck) weighed in yesterday on their compatriots, the Tyre Extinguishers. I may have not recognized some, admittedly. Some topics are just too embarrassing or difficult, I suppose. Silence is violence.
The way it should be? The next step is communism and in a communist society Molly wouldn’t be rich.
Molly and daughter need to read Mamet’s “Secret Knowledge” and his latest book.
The idea that the children know better than the adults has never worked for society.
At some point in this very liberal to very very liberal generational procession, you're somewhere that's not properly called "liberal." If you reach "another level," you need a new word.
How about, "crackpot?"
A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas. - Milton Friedman
“There is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term "liberal" in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives. Freidrich Hayek (@1941)
John "Proud to identify as liberal" Henry
Affluent White Female Liberal (AWFL) says what?
Not a fan.
"you're somewhere that's not properly called "liberal.""
As we all know, liberals weren't properly called liberal in the first place, at least in the U.S. The abuse of the term is the most insidious piece of propaganda in recent American history.
But very very liberal is actually "progressive," or prog for short among commentators here. Which is also a misnomer, since progs don't believe in actual, you know, progress--what with systemic racism and climate change and the general doom feared by disproportionately depressed very very liberal girls.
I mean, I’m very liberal, but she’s another level. Which she should be, and I’m glad."
Says Molly Ringwald
proof positive that liberals are STUPID. want proof? There it is. You don't see it?
that's 'cause YOU'RE stupid
The key is: "and i'm glad" WHY are you glad? Will you be glad when she has you arrested?
Ms. Ringwald is obviously very smart and talented, so it's a little odd that she somehow doesn't notice the logical flaw in her outlook.
If Molly thinks it is right and proper for her daughter to be more to the left than her mom, why doesn't mom move to the left? Can you simultaneously think X is the correct view, but personally cling to something a bit off from X?
Cisliberal vs transliberal?
Too precious.
Serious Question?
What has Molly done* since the Hughes films?
She and her daughter are LIVING on the residuals from THOSE movies
What has Molly done*
she was the mom, in The Secret Life of the american teenager.. BUT, That was fifteen years ago..
And she was a supporting actress in That
"Very Liberal" is not liberal these days.
It is leftwing authoritarianism.
Mamet's latest book of essays is "Recessional." Very good. Buy it through the Althouse portal.
liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law.[1][2][3] Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles. However, they generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.[11] Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
John Henry
I would think the daughter is woke. Progressives seem to be shying away from this term, perhaps because it evokes a thoughtless if not idiotic groupthink, heated up with puritanical moralism. "Those people are bad, they have bad thoughts. They must be stopped." One twentieth century German expression, which was given a very bad application, is Arbeit macht frei: Work sets you free, or paradoxically makes you free. The woke may believe "gruppe denken macht frei"--groupthink makes you free. Another twist would be "Konzerngedanken macht frei"--the thinking of a specific group, such as a corporation. The thinking of the public-private Swamp and big business (except for the "bad" businesses, oil, gas and nuclear) makes you free.
Poor Molly Ringwald. She starred in three John Hughes movies that defined the mid-80's, but since she hadn't been victimized, she can't distance herself from the movies that are out-of-step with a culture that changed after 40 years.
Ringwald was special, but not in the way she wanted. She doesn't seem like a very interesting person.
I am unable to express how much I sympathize with Molly Ringwald over her being forced to live in the hell hole that is France. Thankfully she wasn't forced to live in Catalonia. You go girl.
John Hughes left Hollywood, too.
So she is a woke progressive.
Yeah, I think that is now the level further to the left. It used be Socialist or Communist back in the day. Common to both eras is the scorn for liberals for being half assed hypocrites for real change.
If you reach "another level," you need a new word.
Molly Ringwald used that new word in another interview:
"My 12-year-old daughter Adele is the most woke individual that you've ever met, and I just don't know how I'm gonna go through that, you know, watching it with her and [her] saying, 'How could you do that? How could you be part of something that....' "
https://people.com/parents/all-about-molly-ringwald-kids/
are not : uber, and alt : still available
Woke-Prog
Marxist Cancer
She won’t have any grandchildren.
Soon Ms. Ringwald's very liberal daughter will be able to turn her in to the politburo with the rest of The Breakfast Club. (FBI, CIA, "Justice" Department...take your pick).
"Bites back?" At whom? These combative terms describing rich, effete Hollywood lefties are absurd.
Thank you for pointing out that lefties are not "liberals." Lefties would describe a traditional liberal as "a far right extremist."
Blogger tim maguire said...
I'm guilty of not always distinguishing between liberals and leftists
It's not your fault. They all vote for the same corrupt totalitarian bullshit. What's the difference? They are pro-mRNA mandate, abortion up until the moment of birth, now pro-forever war, turn a blind eye toward inner city violence etc...
What now "liberals" want to claim they are different from modern leftists? They're the "nice" ones. Kiss my ass. They created and support Generations Z's crazy left turn toward communism. And a Ms. Ringwald says, they're proud of it.
Please tell us she still lives in France.
progressive leftism is a cancer.
How liberal are you really if you can't watch The Breakfast Club?
Her daughter is hard left.
And her characters were rarely "The sweet girl next door". IRC, her BC character is a rich bitch.
I didn't like her in the 80s. Having her in the cast was a negative (or was a zero) when it came to buying a ticket.
Wilbur said...I quit using "Liberal" to denote Leftists years ago. There's nothing liberal about them. Nothing.
True, but I like saying that, in today's world, if you want to call yourself a liberal, you first have to reject all liberal values. And if you hold liberal values, you vote Republican.
How about "Fascist"? Not in the common usage which Orwell defined 75 years ago as "anything I disagree with".
Instead of calling these people liberal or even progressive, call then fascist but using the true meaning of the term as defined by Mussolini who coined the word:
Everything Within the State, Nothing Against the State, Nothing Outside the State
A/K/A "socialism"
John True Liberal Henry
I remember The Breakfast Club quite well, I was in high school at the time so I was the target audience. I am honestly trying to figure out what part of it would be offensive to a self described "woke" person. It was all about teenagers seeing and treating each other as human beings rather than stereotypes. What the hell would her woke daughter object to?
Like so many today, she's swallowed so much liberalism she's become an illiberal.
I read the article and I read the comments. I don't think many of those who wrote the most hostile comments actually read the article. Molly seems to be a conscientious mother and a decent and intelligent human being.....I saw her movies back in the eighties but not since then. In the article, she mentions some problematic scenes in those movies, and they are indeed problematic. Those scenes could never be filmed today. She explicitly states that she knows that she has had a life of privilege and that she in no way feels sorry for herself. She says that she moved from acting to writing because that allowed her more time to spend with her children. She says she turned down the role in Pretty Woman because the scenario felt icky to her. She wantd the part in The Silence of the Lambs but didn't get it. Well,duh....In the article, she comes across as an accomplished woman who has made mostly wise decisions in her life. I liked her in those Hughes movies, and I'm glad that her life has turned out okay. I don't expect everybody on this planet to share my political views.... She's translating a book about Maria Schneider who had a kind of nightmare inversion of Molly's persona and life. Maria Schneider truly was badly treated by the entertainment industry and the public. Molly knows that her life was far different than that of Maria Schneider's and is appreciative of the difference.
We had a couple of possible terms 50 years ago:
- radical
- communist
- anarchist
- bat-$h_t crazy
All of the woke think themselves to be the vanguard of the proletariat and that they will never be the ones in the camps. If only Stalin knew.
All of the woke think themselves to be the vanguard of the proletariat and that they will never be the ones in the camps. If only Stalin knew.
As an always conservative (i.e. not only when I got older), that whole "if you aren't liberal when you are young, you have no heart" thing strikes me as BS. I had a heart then and I have a heart now. It is overly simplistic and frankly a bit offensive to thing that younger persons cannot be conservative. So, what could the difference be? Maybe curiosity and skepticism? Not sure. Parochial school in the 80s for me, so that may explain it. No "challenge the liberal orthodoxy of a public school" required. Is that not the "easy path" that most young persons are taking to be "liberal"?
Tim stated: "I'm not saying Ringwald is hoping her daughter becomes conservative later, but I am saying that I agree with her that kids should be liberal--when they're too young to do any damage with their silly ideas."
Yes, but now we have the educational indoctrination at all levels to fully slingshot these "silly ideas" into a disaster of adulthood. I blame the teachers/professors who brainwash our kids and mold them in to useful adults......
jk beats me to it- Molly Ringwald sounds exactly like Claire Standoffish.
It used to be said that if you weren't liberal when you were young you have no heart and if you weren't conservative when you're old you had no brain. Unfortunately we have mentally damaged our youth and I'm afraid they may never recover. Facing up to reality may be so traumatic that they in society can't handle it.
I was recently reading something about John Napier and his work on logarithmic decay and how it applies to societies. He now seems extremely rapid and maybe irreversible.
Oh, come on. Ringwald gets credit for having enough backbone and integrity to extract herself from the Hollywood cesspit at the expense of stardom. She has demonstrated that she's an individual, with a sense of self. But on the other side, she's still entrenched with progressivism, and now it's integrated down to her daughter, only moreso, according to her. From Clueless to Ruthless, in one generation. Not so unique, unfortunately.
We are supposed to care about what these people think, why exactly ?
"If you reach "another level," you need a new word."
Nutcase instantly sprang to mind.
"I'm guilty of not always distinguishing between liberals and leftists. I try to do better as I know leftists hate liberals as much as they hate me, but the two groups still vote together, so there's a strong element of 'screw them.'"
How do you know "the two groups still vote together?" Presumably some leftists vote as do the liberals--for want of any other choices in our "democratic" society--but others do not.
Quoted in "‘I was projected as the sweet American girl next door. It wasn’t me’
Ah, so you were actually a raging bitch then, and still are now?
Says Molly Ringwald, about her 13-year-old daughter, with whom she would find it too uncomfortable to watch "The Breakfast Club."
Seriously? I could understand why she wouldn't want to watch 16 Candles with her, but WTF is wrong with "The Breakfast Club"?
Oh, I know, it treats people who aren't doctrinaire leftists as if they might be valuable human beings with valid perspectives, and we certainly can't have that!
Ah, yes. A woke 13 year old daughter. Given the extreme impressionability of girls, I expect the Molly Ringwald will have a teenage “son” soon enough.
- Rafe
The word Ringwald is seeking might just be "immature." But hey, save a whale, a rainforest, and a climate for me, you sweet young beyond-liberal kiddo, and enjoy the nuke plants France uses to power the country and the nuclear weapons France has to defend itself from the non-French, probably mostly the British.
Liberal as in divergent. Very liberal or progressive liberal (i.e. monotonically divergent).
These films are quite uncomfortable to watch now, especially if you have kids the age of the characters (Ringwald has a daughter of 19 and twins of 13). She can’t even watch The Breakfast Club with her younger daughter.
"uncomfortable" = honest emotion
She can't watch The Breakfast Club with her daughter?
That's fine, actually. The point of teenage rebellion is to be independent of your parents.
Is she embarrassed by that movie, or by how honest and true it was?
She is now the parent that Hughes is skewering.
There is a word for what the leftists in this country are (and always have been).
It is not liberal, as they are anything but.
It is not progressive as most of their policies are regesssive totalitarianism.
It is pure, unadulterated STALINISM.
Jodie Foster is only 5 years older than Ringwald, and was her family’s breadwinner when she was a kid. She’s had a far more interesting and productive career and has taken more risks professionally and personally.
Many years ago, I wrote to Milton Friedman and in passing I noted that he and I live in one of the most liberal areas of the country, the San Francisco Bay area. In his reply, Milton chastised me by saying that he prefers to call it left-wing and to reserve the term "liberal" to its original meaning of liberty.
Just when I thought we got over our national Ringworm infection she shows up again. YAWN. I guess she's unaware that "liberals" don't agree with that whole Liberty thing anymore. Maybe her "daughter" (how does she know that's the right gender for her anyway?) is just a bigger fascist than she was and that's what she's praising. Yeah that's probably it.
I can see her not wanting her daughter to watch Pretty In Pink, but The Breakfast Club? What the hell?
I'm nearing my sixties. Never once in my life did I ever think that a celebrity was someone whose opinion on anything was worth a damn separated from the actual merits of the argument. If Molly Ringwald has an opinion on anything, why should I seek it out? What's her knowledge base, her track record? Why should Sean Penn's opinion on anything going on in Venezuela be considered at all relevant to anything?
There's a glitch in the matrix, I'm afraid: Somehow, we've conflated notoriety with value. If Molly Ringwald wants to offer up a judgment on the arcane nature of portraying a confused teenage twit in a movie, and I'm interested in it? I might seek out her opinions and pronouncements on that issue and lend them some credence. On anything else? WTF is wrong with people that they even care what some half-wit bimboid celebrity thinks about anything?
This is an indicator, I think, of our utter and essential lack of seriousness as a culture. Why do people get all worked up about seeing someone famous? Why the hell are we paying people to violate privacy, good taste, and decency in order to have the material we publish in gossip magazines? OK, great: Tom Cruise is a successful actor. I get that. Why do people think it's OK to harass the man in public? Why is his autograph something you think you need a copy of? Why can't you mind your own business, and let these poor bastards live their lives in the same anonymity you enjoy?
It's a vicious circle; famous people almost have to be mentally deranged, or they'd never seek out the limelights. Because they're deranged, they get the attention they worship, and do everything they can to parlay that into more and more attention. And, the rest of us feed them, like some co-dependent enabling relative of a morbidly obese person who can't fit out the door of their bedroom, and who eats 50,000 calories a day... Brought to them by the enabler, who's healthy...
The whole thing is why I'm not going to be a bit sad when it all finally disappears up it's own ass of utter irrelevancy. It's unsustainable, and it can't last.
Well, until the next time. From reading, Rome had many of these features. Especially in the Late Imperial period, when the whole thing came crashing down on them.
Sadly, the risk/reward of personal interactions with committed leftists skews heavily toward risk. I rarely spend enough time with them to distinguish among the types and gradations of dangerous nonsense. I suspect that most leftists got to their ideologies via a mix of aesthetics and the herd instinct. Hard to categorize the resulting stew of feelings.
I have a hard time determining relevance of this.
Molly Ringwald is a, B or C list 'celebrity'. Why the writer would care about her (her daughter??) is a mystery. There are internet influencers (under wear "models") that have a much larger following. Their opinion would carry more weight. But they would be no more/less informed.
My kids are 11 and 9. Occasionally they will ask about politics. When I try to explain Democrat policies to them, they get a quizzical look on their faces and say to me, "that doesn't make sense..."
No shit, kiddos. No shit.
None of them are liberal because there isn't a single, liberal bone in their bodies.
They're leftists.
BTW, I barely made it through The Breakfast Club when it first came out. Can't remember watching it again - except some brief parts - since.
Now, Sixteen Candles? Any time. A classic.
JLT,
Back in perhaps the 80s the Wall Street Journal called Friedman a "conservative" in an article.
He got them to print a fairly prominent retraction apologizing for calling him a conservative and pointing out that he identified as a "liberal". WSJ commented further that he did not mean liberal in the common modern sense but rather in the "classical liberal sense".
I was getting the paper copy at the time and clipped it but have since lost it.
John Henry
I really enjoy Sixteen Candles. Always have, always will. Sweet and funny. Also somewhat politically incorrect in this stupid modern age. Long Duck Dong rocks!!
John Hughes was a genius.
Molly, she is not a genius.
I'm not much of a liberal, but I am a Marxist, and an economist (just like Milton).
I have this sneaking suspicion that, though they won't admit it, most modern economists are Marxist, like me. Or, to be more polite, "Marxian", meaning that one way or another we see a struggle between capital and labor for surplus value. That leads some, the "liberals", to see capital as evil and labor as exploited, and we ought to fix that.
The "classical liberal" economists did not see things this way. In my jaundiced view, they see everything as capital so why struggle, and that's because who endows those chairs anyway.
The Breakfast Club premiered in Los Angeles on February 7, 1985, and was theatrically released by Universal Pictures on February 15, 1985. It grossed $51.5 million against a $1 million budget,
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even better ROI than Dominion Voting taken private
That's the whole point of the "if you're conservative at 20, you have no heart..." saying
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in many Chinese dramas I've watched expressed as [in subtitles]
'a child thinks about right and wrong; an adult considers pro and con'
????????!!!!!!!!!
Liberal
Very Liberal
Commie
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