Woody Harrelson and RFK Jr.

Two men challenging dominant narratives

On August 11, 2023, USA Today reported: “Actor Woody Harrelson appeared Thursday to endorse a 2024 presidential candidate posing in an Instagram photo wearing a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hat.”  In the photo, Harrelson stood with Cheryl Hines, Kennedy’s wife and star of HBO’s hit show Curb Your Enthusiasm.

While it was fair for USA Today to say that Harrelson “appeared” to endorse Kennedy, I contacted Harrelson’s publicist to confirm whether in fact he was endorsing RFK, Jr. for President.  I received the following quite amusing reply:  “Woody previously issued a response. Sharing it with you as well: ‘Bobby is a personal friend. I don’t endorse candidates from either party because I’m an anarchist.’”  

While not endorsing Kennedy or any other candidate, Harrelson is assuredly not only a friend of Bobby, but he also seems to have a lot of the same ideas and values being promoted by Kennedy’s campaign.  

For example, when Harrelson hosted Saturday Night Live earlier this year, he took the opportunity in his monologue to criticize the Covid vaccine mandates and related profiteering by the big pharmaceutical companies. As Variety reported,

Harrelson spent the majority of his SNL monologue touting the ‘craziest script’ he ever read. ‘So the movie goes like this,’ he explained at the monologue’s climax. ‘The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over...I threw the script away,” Harrelson added. “I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day.’

Of course, as Variety explained, Harrelson received a lot of backlash for this monologue, with many calling him a term RFK, Jr. has been tarred with – a “conspiracy theorist.”  This phrase is just as unfair when hurled at Harrelson as it is at RFK, Jr.  A journal article published at the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020 revealed that Harrelson may have been closer to the truth than the corporate media would like to admit:

From 1999 to 2018, the pharmaceutical and health product industry recorded $4.7 billion—an average of $233 million per year—in lobbying expenditures at the federal level, more than any other industry…. The industry spent $414 million on contributions to candidates in presidential and congressional elections, national party committees, and outside spending groups. Of this amount, $22 million went to presidential candidates and $214 million went to congressional candidates. Of the 20 senators and 20 representatives who received the most contributions, 39 belonged to committees with jurisdiction over health-related legislative matters, 24 of them in senior positions…. In years in which key state referenda on reforms in drug pricing and regulation were being voted on, there were large spikes in contributions to groups that opposed or supported the reforms (emphasis added).

Meanwhile, the same pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars every year on broadcast, cable and other advertising.  

We know what came from these investments. When the pandemic began, Congress and the White House moved mountains to fast-track vaccines to be produced, at tax-payer expense, by the major pharmaceutical companies and then to be marketed without the usual FDA approval protocols. At the same time, the government prioritized the vaccines over other, cheaper therapeutic drugs which were subsequently mocked and vilified by the compliant media. Millions of employees were required to take the vaccines to keep their jobs while millions of consumers were required to show vaccine cards to attend restaurants, concerts and to travel.  As an honorable mention, it’s worth noting that someone who has officially endorsed RFK, Jr. —Eric Clapton—refused to play venues which required the vaccine cards for entry. 

These are simply facts, and all Harrelson did was satirize these facts. For this, he was labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” But just as RFK, Jr. has been brave enough to weather such a label as he points out these facts, so has Harrelson.  Thus, when Harrelson, who isn’t on social media himself, was told by friends that he was the subject of vicious attacks on various platforms, he was nonplussed. Variety reported on his response:

“Well, people told me it was, shall we say, trending,” Harrelson said when asked about his polarizing SNL monologue. “No, I don’t look at that shit. I feel like, ‘I said it on SNL. I don’t need to go further with it… other than to say — well, no, I won’t. Never mind. That’s enough.… But it don’t (sic) change my life one bit. Not one bit, if the mainstream media wants to have a go at you, right? My life is still wonderful.”

Not only has Harrelson bravely spoken out against lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but he also has had the courage to challenge the US War Machine just as Kennedy is doing in his campaign. For example, when asked about the war in Ukraine at a recent press junket, Harrelson, again in his own humorous way, turned his criticisms instead on the unprovoked US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam.  Here again, Harrelson courted controversy by speaking his truth.

But Harrelson is not new to opposing the military-industrial complex.  He was one of the few celebrities who took a stance against the first Gulf War, in 1991, when he was still playing the affable Boston bartender in Cheers.

Harrelson marches to  his own beat. It’s not surprising that he is refraining from endorsing any candidate in the 2024 election. But challenging the dominant narrative while most simply toe the line is just as important as any endorsement. 

Harrelson remains not only a friend of Bobby, as he says, but also a friend of the truth. Perhaps, most importantly, this makes him a friend of the American public—a country taking a hard look at itself while searching for the truth.