15 May 2012 National Center for Public Policy Research Questions Time Warner Executives Over Actor Morgan Freeman’s Outspoken Radical Politics

Freeman’s Past Statements May Have Hurt Previous Warner Brothers Movie Gross; Shareholder Concern Expressed for Upcoming Batman Movie Starring Freeman

Burbank, CA / Washington, D.C. – At today’s Time Warner, Inc. shareholder meeting in Burbank, California, a representative of the National Center for Public Policy Research plans to ask company executives about concerns they should have about past and potential alienating political comments made by actor Morgan Freeman and their possible negative effects on Warner Brothers Studios movie profits.

In his prepared question, Oscar Murdock, a spokesman for the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network and a tea party activist, asks: “Considering the potential damage Mr. Freeman’s radical politics inflicted on his last Warner Brothers film, is Time Warner taking any steps to make sure that the press tour for the new Batman movie is not similarly used by Mr. Freeman to promote his divisive views, but instead to affirmatively draw people to movie theaters?”

On the day Freeman’s last movie for Warner Brothers was released — “Dolphin Tale,” on September 23, 2011 — the actor went on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” and called tea party movement opposition to Barack Obama “a racist thing.” Freeman added that the tea party agenda was to “screw the country” so the President would fail.

According to a poll by Penn Schoen Berland that was conducted for The Hollywood Reporter, conservatives and people of faith expressed more interest than liberals in seeing “Dolphin Tale” at the time of its release, but 34 percent of conservatives and 37 percent of tea party members indicated they were less likely to see the movie after learning about Freeman’s remarks about them on CNN. Clips of the Freeman comments went viral on the Internet.

“As far as Morgan Freeman’s accusation about the tea party are concerned, he needs to realize that the tea party movement is a bipartisan, multi-racial coalition of ordinary Americans striving for a better economic situation, a fair judiciary and lawmakers who focus on legislating over playing politics. That’s not radical,” said Project 21’s Oscar Murdock. “There may not be a lot of black faces at a tea party rally, but that’s no indicator of racial animosity. I’m black, and I’m a tea party member. Many blacks enthusiastically supported Obama in 2008 and still admire him. Because they don’t join the tea party movement doesn’t make the tea party racist.”

A copy of Oscar Murdock’s question, as prepared for delivery, can be found at https://nationalcenter.org/TimeWarnerQuestion0512.pdf.

Project 21 has previously spoken out against Morgan Freeman’s outrageous accusations against tea party activists, for example, here, here and here.

National Center for Public Policy Research President David Ridenour is a Time Warner Inc. shareholder. Oscar Murdock, who celebrated his 80th birthday Friday, is attending the meeting as Ridenour’s proxy. The Time Warner Inc. shareholder meeting will be held in the Steven J. Ross Theater on the Warner Brothers Studios lot in Burbank, California on May 15 at 10:00 AM Pacific.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a conservative, free-market, non-profit think-tank established in 1982. It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters. In 2011 it received over 350,000 individual donations. Two percent of its revenue comes from corporate sources. Contributions to it are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

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