Robert is gone, and in Austria we have a custom: we don’t speak ill of the dead. Fine. I’ll honor that. But shining a cold light on their words is not slander—it’s necessity. Otherwise, every utterance of the deceased becomes untouchable scripture. We don’t canonize Hitler’s ramblings or Stalin’s decrees; why should we sanctify anyone else’s?
Robert was an actor. From what I gather, a competent one. I’m hardly qualified to grade his craft, but let’s be blunt: his job was pretending. A career of inhabiting masks, of impersonating what he was not. That is what good actors do. And that makes him, by definition, a professional pretender.
So how, exactly, does that translate into scientific authority? Why would we take the pronouncements of a lifelong mimic as gospel truth now, when his entire existence was a performance?
A suggestion to the living in his trade: keep acting. Leave science to those who practice science. To each their craft.
Rest in peace, Robert.
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/16/robert-redford-causes-environment-climate-change-trump