The rapper Kanye (Mr. Kim "Camera Slut" Kardashian) West's declaration of his intention to seriously run for President in the near future and our current Prez's (wholly facetious) public advice to him bring up the issue of celebrities becoming involved in politics. Taking a good, strong look at the history of such and being a fellow who is (I like to think) thoroughly, totally unburdened by simplistic emotionalism or knee-jerk ideology have caused me to come to the following conclusion: Celebrities injecting themselves into the political realm hurts both politics and the national psyche.
First off, for celebrity/entertainment folks to insert themselves into political causes severely distracts attention from those causes. Pace the wisdom that celebrities' fame brings attention to those causes (it was the longtime actress Marlo Thomas who once told a magazine, concerning celebrity endorsement of politicians: "I won't change votes, but people will listen to me. I get a spotlight on me, and then I turn it over to the candidate"), what celebrities actually do is trivialize causes by turning them into theater. Their involvement turns causes (and issues) into The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, the Tonight Show--show-business extravaganzas with star power, with the original cause (and the original issue), no matter how pressing or how significant, being seriously downplayed (Just one example: Redford was once at a public gathering speaking about the issue of nuclear energy. He was quite eloquent and passionate and he spoke for, as best I recall, two hours. At the end of his address, he opened the floor for questions. The very first question that was put to him was: "Did you and Paul Newman really jump off the cliff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?" [An interesting note: Redford, who during the 1970s was interviewed by the veteran television journalist Dan Rather, will portray Rather in an upcoming big-screener which will also feature Cate Blanchett] And, more recently, Obama, frankly, showed a considerable amount of maturity and perspective when, when a reporter asked him what was his opinion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "fact-finding" stay in Cuba, he replied that he didn't pay attention to it, asserting: "I have better things to do." His answer clearly showed that our Prez knows infinitely better than to allow his decisions regarding international policy to in any sense be impacted by a couple of singers. And, even more recently, the current Republican presidential-candidate front-runner Donald Trump displayed a [very rare] sense of proportion when, after he contended that the supermodel supreme Heidi Klum "was no longer a 10," and a reporter later asked him about Klum, flatly refusing to answer, claiming: "I have better things to talk about," thus admirably acknowledging that Heidi Klum, for all her beauty and her charm and her sex appeal, does not merit being a subject of serious discussion in a campaign for the Presidency).
Secondly, celebrities getting into political issues big-time very often negatively affects the celebrities themselves, turning them into pompous, sanctimonious drones, nakedly ramming their ideologies down our throats. Tell the truth, reader: Aren't you still mightily resentful of the fact that the veteran cinematic actress Susan Sarandon and her then-common-law-husband Tim Robbins and the longtime film actor Richard Gere, respectively, blatantly hijacked their time during the Academy Awards to push their political concerns? And that, much later, the big-screen (at the time) actress Patricia Arquette openly seized her period under the Oscar spotlight to deliver a shrill, phony-feminist rant? The fact is, the reason that such 1950s sex queens as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner won our hearts, apart from their knockout beauty, their high-octane charm, and mesmerizing sexiness, is that they were "apolitical." Their vivaciousness and their laughter were borne out of nothing more than wanting to have and to give pure pleasure, with positively no desire or inclination to ram their politics (assuming they had any) in our faces. And both the country-music uber-icon Johnny Cash and the renowned actor James Caan said flat-out that show-business performers have no business inserting themselves into politics.
Kindly don't misunderstand. This is not to completely condemn showbiz engagement in political affairs. Au contraire. Celebs participating in the mega-historic 1963 March On Washington (among the involved showbiz figures: Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne) were considerably helpful. That was a case of Hollywood celebs engaged in a specific event (the March, of course) for a specific purpose (to bring public attention to a walk meant to further the entirely-just cause of racial equality) and in no sense attempting to take over the happening. Also: When the then-Cheers-player Woody Harrelson joined in public protest concerning U.S. policies during the Gulf War, he was in no capacity milking his celebrity; he was simply exercising his Constitutionally-protected right as a citizen to protest what his government was doing. And my gal Robin Givens working to stop domestic violence against women is highly beneficial in that she is in a position to employ her personal experience with such violence, namely her own hellish marriage to Mike Tyson, to help other women who are in the shoes which she herself was once forced to wear. Then, too: When celebrities promote political causes directly through their work, the results can be devastatingly effective. Examples: The classic TV sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show inspired many teenage girls and young women to, a la said program's lead character, Moore's Mary Richards, enter the workplace; the legendary theatrical film All The President's Men brought to the fore the horrors of Watergate--and re-ignited in the public mind the colossal arrogance Ford displayed when he pardoned Nixon--and thus was a key factor in Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential-election victory; the iconic Oliver Stone picture JFK was a super-decisive component in persuading Congress to make public the files regarding John F. Kennedy's assassination; and the fourth-hour-of-the-Today-show co-hostess Hoda Kotb making public her breast-cancer ailment greatly moved and inspired other women going through similar struggles. It is when celebrities set out to be modern-day Joans/Jacks of Arc, when they attempt to be amateur Ralph Naders and Pat Buchanans and Erin Brockoviches, "speaking out" on matters about which they have, at best, a slender knowledge, that celebrity social involvement becomes negative, even harmful.
It was Stephen J. Ross, in his book Hollywood Left and Right, who asserted, referring to the present-day breed of activist celebs: "[T]hey deserve our respect. If every citizen behaved like them, the United States would be a far better place." No, Stephen J. Ross, if the rest of us emulated these celebrity Naders, et al, this country would be in even worse shape than it is now. And the damage would be irreversible. .
