Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org recruited actor Justin Long to mock Mitt Romney’s “love of firing people” at Bain Capital in a new video satire released Thursday.
The video is part of the group’s ongoing campaign to conflate Romney with Gordon Gekko, the fictional, corrupt corporate executive in the 1987 movie “Wall Street.”
“The point is, ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Gekko said in an oft-quoted line.
“Mitt Romney is our very own modern-day Gordon Gekko,” Long said in a statement released by the group. “I made this video because it was a chance to play a presidential candidate who is exactly the kind of guy the 99 percent have been protesting against.”
Romney founded the venture capital firm Bain Capital in 1984. His presidential campaign touts his record there as one of job creation, but Romney recently took some criticism from fellow Republican candidates over the percentage of businesses that went bankrupt or shut down under Bain’s investment.
“This video uses humor to make a serious point about Mitt Romney’s record of putting profits before people,” MoveOn.org Executive Director Justin Ruben said in a statement. “Mr. 1 percent, Mitt Romney likes to claim he’s a job creator, but as former CEO of Bain Capital, he cut thousands of jobs and walked away with millions. Mitt Romney is a job destroyer, not a job creator. There’s no doubt he’d govern for and by the millionaires on Wall Street, and leave the rest of us behind.”
