And they accuse the right of being violent, gun wielding psychopaths. I’ll admit that I’ve run across the occasional loopy right winger, but nothing from my side of the street can compare to Easy Rider with a grudge.

While in Cannes to hustle his latest film project The Big Fix, a feature documentary on the explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon, and the aftermath of the spill, former Easy Rider and current left wing whack job, Peter Fonda lost his collective radical leftist mind. Speaking off the cuff while on the red carpet, Fonda cut loose with a four-letter attack on President Barack Obama – and British Petroleum – calling Mr. Obama a traitor over his handling of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

“I sent an email to President Obama saying, ‘You are a f—– – traitor,’ using those words… ‘You’re a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military – in this case the coastguard – what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do’.”

Fonda, who said he sent the email last week, appears in The Big Fix trying to storm several Louisiana beaches to document the environmental impact of the biggest oil spill in US history, only to be turned away by BP clean up crews. Well, if I saw a wild eyed Peter Fonda coming out of the ocean with a retinue of cameramen in tow I would probably kick his butt off the beach too.

But I digress.

Lecturing at length in front of a captive and alcohol besotted audience at the American Pavilion to promote his documentary, Fonda denounced BP as “a bunch of Brits – I thought we kicked them out a long time ago. They tried to get back in in 1812, but they didn’t make it.” I guess Peter must have learned this part of American history in elementary school before he started down the psychedelic highway that has brought him to Cannes and talk of armed insurrection.

Armed insurrection, indeed.

In a later interview in front of the foreign press corps Fonda proudly displayed the end results of decades of drug use by stating that he was encouraging his grandchildren to learn to shoot long range rifles.

“I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words ‘Barack Obama’, but …”

In the absence of the proper firing of all of his synapses, Fonda went on, “It’s more of a thought process than an actuality, but we are heading for a major conflict between the haves and the have not’s. I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war. Now, it’s about starting the world.”

“I prefer to not to use the words, ‘let’s stop something’. I prefer to say, ‘let’s start something, let’s start the world’.” Well, speaking for myself, I prefer to say ‘let’s stop Peter from speaking in public and let’s get Easy Rider some new meds.’