David Harbour is not an idiot…

No, wait… where are you going?

OK let me rephrase that. He may very well be an idiot, I don’t know the man, but he’s not stupid. He knows exactly what he’s doing here in his bizarre defense of Socialism.

The money quote is “If you work at Starbucks and you make the coffee, then you should own it. You’re the one making the coffee!“

Harbour obviously doesn’t believe this or else he’d have his lawyer on the phone with Netflix asserting his ownership rights to STRANGER THINGS. His lawyer is not making that call… and it’s fair to ask why not?

His lawyer is not making that call because Harbour knows damned well how it works. Netflix puts up a hundred million dollars to make a show, and then goes out and employs people to do certain specific jobs “for hire” on that show. Those employees are paid for their work and then they move on to other jobs. They do not own the thing they were hired to work on. That’s not how it works… not even in Socialist economies.

So what is Harbour doing? Three things, in my opinion…

1. Trolling – owning the Cons… drinking their tears… etc etc. In Hollywood, where there’s no such thing as bad publicity (unless you get caught doing something MAGA), Harbour is pushing this outrageous nonsense for the clicks and the lulz. No one who has any control over Harbour’s career prospects will do anything other than laugh and retweet, and he doesn’t care what Conservatives think anyway, so this stupidity is absolutely consequence free for him.
2. Burnishing his resume – Look, it’s hard out there for a middle-aged white guy. No one wants to hire white males for any job in Hollywood right now. On the acting side, roles are simply not being written white, and the roles that already are written white are being flipped to be “diverse.” There are a hundred other actors out there just like Harbour, and the competition for a shrinking number of roles is fierce. He can’t make himself more talented, or taller, or less white so the only thing left to do is make sure the casting directors and other folks who determine whether or not he gets hired know that he is woke woke woke, and maybe even SUPER woke. So when it comes down to hiring David Harbour, or some other actor who hasn’t been flogging Socialsm on social media and drinking Conservative tears… all things being equal in Super Woke Hollywood, Harbour will get the job.
3. Cancellation Insurance – In our current Orwellian outrage-driven world where something you say can be perfectly reasonable on Monday and then get you cancelled on Wednesday, people in the public eye, Llike Harbour, can never really know what the rules are from one day to the next. Any loser with six Twitter followers and nothing better to do can dredge up some old quote or tweet at any moment and drestroy Harbour’s career in the time it takes to retweet something and tag the CEO of Netflix. So Harbour is building a resume… he thinks that if he ever gets cancelled, he can call up quotes like this one defending Socialism and say “guys, I can’t be cancelled… I’m down for the struggle… I’m on your side!!!” not understanding that Robespierre eventually went to the guillotine too.

So, why bring all this up? I do so to point out that none of the three things Harbour is trying to do can be done without our help. The more we scream OUTRAGE! and the more we retweet his quotes and the more “our” journalists write stories about his ahistorical garbage, the more we help him burnish his resume and the more we help to harden him against the prospect of a future cancellation.

Don’t do it.

Like your mother used to tell you when a younger sibling was annoying the crap out of you… just ignore him*.

• yes I realize I’m breaking my own rule here, but for a while we’re going to have to keep pointing this stuff out if for no other reason than to point out why we should stop pointing this stuff out.