ACTOR EDWARD NORTON attacked President Bush as possessing a “low quality mind” this week, and thus joined a long list of stars, pundits, and professors who have elected to stand opposite three-quarters of American public opinion. Others who have done so–including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, and the Dixie Chicks–have discovered that a lot of folks listen closely when celebrities speak and respond in the marketplace by refusing to buy products or tickets or to sponsor speeches. These responses have upset the Bush critics and their reaction can fairly be described as whining. Robbins gets the “biggest whine” prize. “A chill wind is blowing,” he intoned in hilarious self-parody at the National Press Club. The breeze he felt was in fact that of a younger demographic waving goodbye to the tired hypocrisies of the aging left. Hypocrisy is the best that can be said about Robbins and his life-partner Sarandon posing as victims, since both have been noisy supporters of boycotts and paybacks in the past: Sarandon urged Dr. Laura be run off television, and Robbins wanted Elizabeth Hurley in the dock for crossing a SAG picket line a few years back.

Yet now they talk about a new “climate of oppression.” (Real victims of political pressure, say in Cuba or Iraq, would be astonished to learn that pampered elites in the West think it’s tough sledding to have people say critical things about you and not buy your CDs.) The level of ignorance about what the First Amendment even is–a restraint on government, not private speech–makes these celebrity politicos even harder to take seriously.