Tony Kushner, the screenwriter behind the Oscar nominated movie 'Lincoln,' compared Barack Obama to the 16th president and called the defeat of Mitt Romney a "rejection" of the "Reagan era ideology" that leads to a "frightening" path of "psychotic individualism." Appearing on the February 14, 2013 edition of PBS's Charlie Rose Show the openly gay playwright called Obama's evolution on same-sex marriage "Lincolnian" and roasted Ronald Reagan, Romney and the Tea Party:
TONY KUSHNER: So you have people like these Tea Party people protesting government and then asked if they really want to give up their Social Security payments. And they don`t seem to know that, that is actually part of what government is. There`s a rejection of the sort of basic idea of human community behind the Reagan, behind Reagan era ideology that is really frightening. And it leads us to terrible, terrible places.
And now that we`re facing challenges like climate change that absolutely demand a global collective response, an organized global collective response. We have no hope for survival as a species if we continue down the path of this kind of psychotic individualism...I think we`re beginning to see, in the last election we saw, I think, a real rejection. I mean what Romney basically had to offer was the same old trickle-down nonsense and people said I don`t believe it any more.
Crossposted at Newsbusters.org.