Susan Sarandon, the Oscar-winning actress, was on BBC's Hardtalk Extra on Friday, talking about ... well, all sorts of things. It is amusing to see what a mix runs through the brain of the "liberal" stars of Hollywood who have brought, for the most part, shame to the word "liberal".

At one point, talking about the "generations of youth" now and in the past, she said, and I paraphrase, that the youth now are less optimistic because they do not see the results of their action as soon as her generation did in the '70s. Morevoer, she thought, the corporate culture and power has increased since then. But she remained hopeful that because of the advent of the internet and cell phones and other means of fast communication and a new tech-savvy generation of youth, it would be countered. For this she pointed out the anti-WTO protests of 1999 in Seattle. When asked what she thinks of the failure of her friends to effect any change recently, she said that was because

the other side conrols the media, and the house, and the senate, ... you lose everything when you lose the press.

These remarks left me wondering:

• How could the hope to battle "corporate structure" in Sarandon's view remain in the use of technologies such as cell phone and the internet, which have been made mainstream themselves by "corporate structures" like T-Mobile and AOL?
• How could Sarandon think they have lost the press when, for instance, the New York Times, one of the world's most widely read newspapers, is basically a conduit for her kind of ideas, and Sarandon herself appears on BBC World, one of the most widely viewed news channels of the world?
• How could Sarandon think they have lost because they have no control over the house and the senate? "Losing" in this case is itself defined as "losing the control over the house and the senate." An effect cannot be its own cause.

The actual reason Sarandon and her friends (or anyone for that matter) have lost the battle of ideas is that their thinking is irrational. They will continue to lose over the long run as long as they remain that way.