What do you think of when you hear the name Susan Sarandon? Besides “age-defying rack” and “awful taste in men.” That’s right: political activism! She’s all about speaking up for causes like UNICEF, being nice to gay people, not having wars, etc. She doesn’t care about the publicity. It’s not that she craves the attention. She really cares about people.

Which is why she and her jowly, scowly domestic partner Tim Robbins are protesting the building of a new hospital near their home in Greenwich Village. According to the NYT:

Since April, dozens of speakers have stepped before the open microphones of the Landmarks Preservation Commission during hearings to praise the quality of health care at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan. But on Tuesday, two celebrity neighbors did not have kudos in mind.

The actors… who live a block from the hospital, took their turn offering comments along with 94 other speakers during a six-hour public hearing. The question before the commissioners was whether the hospital should be able to demolish five buildings in a $1.6 billion proposal to build a medical tower and a high-rise luxury condominium in conjunction with the Rudin Management Company on the land the hospital owns in the Greenwich Village Historic District…

She urged the commissioners “to slow down here and look at what the alternatives are.”

Possible alternatives:

• If somebody is sick and they make less money than Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, have them euthanized.
• Have you been injured in a car accident? You should have stayed home.
• Echinacea really does work wonders, you know!

Seriously, though, here’s the part I don’t get:

In an interview during a break in the hearing, she said that in visits to the emergency room and to patients in the hospital, she had been turned off by “the long lines,” and found the facilities “dirty.”

Right, so they want to build a new hospital. What’s the problem? Sure, the construction might inconvenience you, Susan, and maybe the architectural style offends your delicate sensibilities, but it would be good for the community. Why are you opposing it?

In the interview, Ms. Sarandon said she would continue to oppose the towers in an effort to preserve her neighborhood. “We value being downtown because of what downtown means,” she said.

Apparently downtown means not having adequate medical care unless you’re rich enough to go someplace else. Why are kids in Tanzania more important than kids in your own neighborhood?

P.S. So far I’ve been undecided, but Sarandon has pushed me off the fence:

“If McCain gets in, it’s going to be very, very dangerous,” she says.

“It’s a critical time, but I have faith in the American people. If they prove me wrong, I’ll be checking out a move to Italy. Maybe Canada, I don’t know. We’re at an abyss.”

McCain ‘08!