Lily Tomlin ends the year in handcuffs and under arrest

It’s Week 12 for the climate alarmists protesting during Fire Drill Fridays rallies in Washington, D.C. The designated celebrity to be arrested for the cause this week was the actress and comedienne Lily Tomlin.

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Jane Fonda moved to Washington with a four-month commitment specifically to organize Friday protests on Capitol Hill. The objective is to promote the Green New Deal. The 82-year-old activist actress is inspired by Swedish teenage climate change scold Greta Thunberg. Each week the protest has a theme and this week’s theme was the devastation of the world’s forests. Ms. Tomlin even managed to include illegal immigration into her speech to the rally on the southeast lawn of the Capitol.

We have got to stop hugging and start saving the trees,” Tomlin told the crowd, while blasting one company, BlackRock, for investing in firms that do deforestation and immigration detention camps. She said that those immigrants include “climate refugees,” or those who move from their homes for reasons related to climate change.

“I look around and I know in my heart that I’m not the only tree hugger here,” Tomlin told the crowd. “Sadly, hugging trees is not enough today.” Said the actress, according to Deadline, “These corporations are making oodles of money on the front end, oodles of money on the back end. It is beyond reprehensible.”

Tomlin was providing the usual anti-Capitalism red meat for the protesters. Jane Fonda’s fever dream is to destroy the fossil fuel industry though she wouldn’t be able to enjoy her life as she knows it without the benefits of the oil and gas industry. Her hypocrisy seems to escape her consciousness. No one wants to go back to living as in the days of pre-Industrial Revolution America. A frequently used motto among the Fire Drill Fridays devotees is some perceived grievance must be immediately corrected because it “can’t wait” and this week the forests of the world “can’t wait”.

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I wonder if Ms.Tomlin supports the controlled burns of forest land in California to prevent the devastation brought about by the wildfires? That is effective land management yet environmental activists don’t seem to understand it. By clearing them out, there is less to catch fire. Controlled burning helps the Forest Service improve forest health and reduces the threat of large fires. Controlled burning can be managed to reduce the intensity and magnitude of bigger wildfires. It reduces the accumulation of flammable fuels. Controlled burning just makes sense. The forests come back healthier and the threat of wildfires destroying the land is lessened.

Lily Tomlin was zip-tied and led away as the crowd cheered her on. It’s all about the performance for the cameras, you know. She is the latest addition to the list of Jane Fonda’s celebrity pals who are willing to get themselves arrested to draw attention to Fonda’s pet project. Fonda wasn’t arrested this week, though. She isn’t quite committed enough to the cause to live with the consequences of weekly arrests. The jail time increases and she doesn’t want to interfere with the filming schedule of her and Tomlin’s Netflix show, Grace and Frankie. Filming is scheduled to begin again soon. You may remember another of their co-stars, Sam Waterson, was arrested during a Fire Drill Fridays protest in October. When Fonda first began the Friday protests, she promised weekly appearances of celebrity friends who would join her. Lily Tomlin’s participation this week was advertised earlier this week to help draw a crowd.

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This week’s crowd looks really small, though. Fonda likes to say that concerned activists must be willing to put their bodies on the line (get arrested) for the cause. She’s only doing that herself in small doses, though, so she doesn’t really suffer any consequences. Once a limosine liberal, always a limosine liberal.

Fonda was arrested last week to celebrate her 82nd birthday. It was her fifth arrest since the protests began. She has only spent one night in jail. Last week’s arrest didn’t result in an overnight stay so her birthday celebration wasn’t postponed. Lucky for her that prosecution in D.C. is flexible for protesters. Her commitment to the protests is soon coming to an end.

The “Grace & Frankie” star was arrested alongside several other protesters on Dec. 20. Of the 138 arrested, two were kept overnight, Fonda’s rep Ira Arlook told USA TODAY, adding Fonda was released later that night.

Fonda is nearing the end of her Fire Drill Friday arrests, as the actress wrote on her blog she will make a “bittersweet” return to California on Jan. 11 to prepare for the 7th and final season of “Grace & Frankie.”

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The two actresses kept reminding their fellow protesters about their Netflix show. Jane Fonda referred to Tomlin as “Frankie”, her character in Grace and Frankie, even as they played out a little disagreement over real or artificial Christmas trees.

There were several moments of humor, as when Tomlin called for an end to the practice cutting down Christmas trees and to go artificial.

But Fonda then took the stage and said that real Christmas trees were OK. “Tree farms for the most part are out in kind of degraded land,” she told the crowd.

Tomlin, who was sitting behind Fonda, turned her chair around with her back to the crowd.

“What happened? You’re wrong. I love when Frankie is wrong,” Fonda quipped.

The next two Friday protests (the last of them) will focus on “shaming the companies that are underwriting the fossil fuel industry.”

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