Millionaire Russell Brand Dismisses Criticism of His Book Because Journalists are “Highly Paid”

Professional idiot comedian Russell
Brand has a new book out, Revolution, pimping his
half-baked ideas about an anti-capitalist revolution. Michael
Moynihan (Reason
contributing editor) read it for The Daily Beast,
and
dismissed it for its mistakes and misquotes and for being
unfunny and unreadable. He pulled one choice quote to show what
Brand’s writing is like:

“This attitude of churlish indifference seems like nerdish
deference contrasted with the belligerent antipathy of the
indigenous farm folk, who regard the hippie-dippie interlopers, the
denizens of the shimmering tit temples, as one fey step away from
transvestites.”

That quote, in turn, was used to create a meme where Brand’s
verbosity is interrupted by “PARKLIFE!”, a reference to a 1994 Blur
song. Buzzfeed explains
it, and catches Brand’s response to his criticism, via
Twitter: “It’s weird how highly paid, privately educated
journalists who work for the corporate media attack my book
Revolution.”

Russell Brand is reportedly worth around $15 million, the kind
of money his ideology says is “hoarded” when it’s all in one place
or one person. Nevertheless his book, Revolution, an
anti-capitalist screed, is available for sale at capitalist
enterprises like
Amazon. Despite the possibility in 2014 to release a manifesto
like Brand’s at no cost to the reader over the internet—and Brand’s
fame would guarantee a wide audience—Brand chose the more
traditionally capitalist route of charging good money for his book.
It’s his right in a market we would deem free, but it wouldn’t be
in the kind of market Brand would impose on the rest of us. Weird
indeed.