The Democrats have a long history of being in bed with entertainment industry elites. I don’t like to use the word “Hollywood” when writing about the lefties in showbiz, because there are a lot of conservatives working behind the cameras there. Most of the stars, as we are painfully aware, are enthusiastic socialists, mostly because they can afford to be.
This relationship between the Dems and entertainers has given the latter the false impression that they know something about American politics. Some do, but even those who have some activist experience are still out of touch due to the aforementioned wealth. When coupled with enormous egos, this false impression leads to a lot of pontification from the celebs on a variety of issues. They genuinely think that regular people in flyover country are waiting to find out what movie stars think about social security before they vote.
Dem politicians love to cavort with celebrities. It’s easier than campaigning or having coherent policy ideas, after all. As the 2016 presidential campaign wound down to its final few days, Donald Trump was tirelessly traversing the swing states. He wrapped it all up in Michigan at around three in the morning on election day. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, attended a Beyoncé concert in Philadelphia that was being thrown in her honor. Granny Maojackets then rested up for a couple of days for what she was sure was going to be a historic, landslide victory for her.
At this point it should be noted that Hillary would have carried the metropolitan Philadelphia area even without Queen B’s help.
Bless their dark, secular hearts, Dems and celebs have been sticking with this playbook despite the diminishing returns since the Obama years. We all remember the Kamala fever that actors, actresses, and musicians had — or at least pretended to have — last year. It turned out that getting Robert DeNiro to yell at clouds and repeatedly call Trump a fascist was, once again, not a winning formula.
We are now seeing some cracks in the Dem/Celeb Wall of Ego-Driven Pomposity when it comes to political opinions. Some likeable and talented actors are in “Yeah, maybe let’s not,” mode now. This is from a column that Sarah wrote earlier in the month:
Have any of you watched the TV show Landman starring Billy Bob Thornton and Demi Moore? It’s one of those shows that intrigues me, but I haven’t gotten around to checking it out yet. Thornton was on ManningCast last week — that’s Peyton and Eli’s “Monday Night Football” show — and I was impressed with how down-to-earth he was. He didn’t act inauthentic or like he just wanted to promote himself or gain attention. He just sounded like a regular guy talking about football.
That endeared him to me, but something he said while appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently made me like him even more. He told Hollywood to stop preaching their political messages at awards shows. Like the rest of us, he’s over it.
I’m glad that Thornton specifically addressed awards shows. True, not as many people watch them anymore, but that’s the forum where celebrities feel the most entitled to jettison the two or three brain cells each of them has left. Sarah notes that Thornton praised the monologue Ricky Gervais delivered at the 2020 Golden Globes, when he admonished the stars for being hypocrites and told them not to blather on about politics while accepting their awards. Ricky did that in more Gervaisian language, of course. It’s one thing, though, to have a smart-a** comic say something like that, another to have an Academy Award-winner like Billy Bob tell them to shut it.
Thornton has never been one of the irritating and vocal political types. He’s proof that a star can go without beating the public over the head with political opinions and not wither away. Also, I highly recommend Landman. It’s one of the better offerings of the last couple of years on any streaming platform. The characters have depth and arcs, which is refreshing.
Jennifer Lawrence, on the other hand, has never had any filter when it comes to holding forth with opinions, political or otherwise. Here’s something from a recent article in The Free Press:
“During the first Trump administration, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off,” Lawrence said. “But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing?”
To which I say: Hey, is there an echo in here?
As I wrote at the start of this year, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 corresponded with an unprecedented surge in open partisanship from the celebrity set, the colonization of the Oscars acceptance speeches by increasingly strident political commentary, and the self-conscious intrusion of politics into everything from Star Wars to Superman—all of which accomplished absolutely nothing except to make everyone feel powerless, annoyed, alienated, or some hideous combination of all three.
That hits the nail on the head there — the entertainment industry loudmouths have only succeeded in being off-putting. As with almost all of the loudest people on the left, they don’t win over any hearts and minds; they merely generate high-fives from people who already agree with them. They aren’t the opinion-changing force that they believe themselves to be.
Sydney Sweeney has been the official sweetheart “Five O’Clock Somewhere” for the past couple of years, but that’s not the only reason that I’m giving her props for being at the forefront of this change of attitude. Almost single-handedly, Sweeney has bucked the trend of famous people bowing and scraping to the woke mob after being bullied. She’s been comfortably doing her own thing ever since the spotlight has been on her. The victimhood fetishists from the rage mob desperately wanted Sweeney to apologize for her American Eagle ad, which was a monster financial boon for the company. When a constipated shrew from GQ Magazine tried to badger her into groveling, Sweeney said, “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” rendering the entertainment industry rage mob almost permanently impotent.
Personally, I hope the first issue that she feels passionately enough to speak out about deals with how ignorant and annoying her fellow actors and actresses are when they think they know anything about politics.
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