This Just In: Celebrities No Longer Relevant

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In news that will surprise no one but celebrities themselves, a recent poll confirms what the Harris/Walz campaign learned the hard way in November: that Americans do not want to hear political opinions from out-of-touch, rich-and-famous entertainers, including star athletes.

Last Thursday, a survey collaboration between the Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s nonpartisan National Opinion Research Center was published which posed the question, How do you feel about the following speaking out on political issues: small businesses, large companies, professional athletes, and celebrities?

While respondents on both sides of the political aisle tended to support small businesses speaking up (and, to a much lesser extent, big companies), fewer than 40 percent of Democrat respondents said they approved of celebrities publicly sharing their views on politics, and mere slivers of Republicans and Independents (11 percent and 12 percent respectively) said the same.

The answers regarding professional athletes – like Black Lives Matter blowhard LeBron James and communist Colin Kaepernick – were about the same: 39 percent of Democrats approved of them spouting off about politics, compared to only 16 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of Independents.

In a related question, the poll also found that 65 percent of Americans are trying to reduce their media consumption about government and politics due to “information overload, fatigue, or similar reasons”; 50 percent reported that they feel the same due to “overseas conflicts,” and about 40 percent cited “the economy and climate change” as the reason they are reducing their news intake. This option wasn’t offered, but I wonder how many decided to reduce their media consumption because they recognize that the news media now consist almost entirely of progressive political activists and propagandists, not journalists.

But I digress.

For many years Democrats had harnessed progressive Tinseltown’s star power to dazzle younger voters into believing they were the Party of the young and cool. Candidates as recently as Kamala Harris trotted out every superstar they could rent – in Kamala’s case, Oprah ($1 million), Eminem ($1.8 million), Lizzo ($3 million), Megan Thee Stallion ($5 million), and Beyoncé (a reported $10 million and she didn’t even perform). These celebrities all deny personally receiving a dime for their endorsements – disingenuously so, because the money simply went to their production companies instead. The Harris campaign should demand its money back from all those shameless grifters.

(Republicans have not been immune to trying the same celebrity endorsement strategy but with far less success, because prominent, openly conservative celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight, and Kelsey Grammer are rare in Hollywood and easily dismissed as old, uncool white guys.)

Kamala sought support from many more stars: Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Bruce Springsteen, and of course, Taylor Swift – all to no avail, because in the recent election, this glittering cavalcade of elites did not move the needle one iota in the Democrats’ favor. “Kamala Harris’ candidacy is dead and so is the Hollywood celebrity endorsement,” wrote the New York Post’s Kirsten Fleming in the wake of Donald Trump’s red landslide in November. “Even though Harris’ slogan was ‘We are not going back,’ the campaign was firmly in reverse, taking the DeLorean to 2008. That was back when Hollywood A-listers meant something around here.”

It’s true. Barack Obama got a boost back in the day from the support of household names like George Clooney and Matt Damon, but the Democrats misgauged just how weary those contemptible flyover Americans have since become of virtue-signaling Hollywood millionaires lecturing them about preserving democracy. People weren’t getting worked up about “fascism” nearly as much as they were about skyrocketing inflation and energy costs, the collapse of law and order, open-borders immigration flooding the country with foreign murderers and rapists, the woke sexualization of pre-schoolers, the racial division of DEI programs, and much more radicalism foisted on them by the Biden regime. Billionaire Taylor Swift’s endorsement, for example, meant less than zero to Americans devastated by hurricane Helene and abandoned by the government.

Celebrities have as much right as other citizens to speak out about politics, but the megaphone their fame affords them unfortunately boosts their signal to a degree no one else can match. Voters demonstrated in this last election that we’re fed up with being subjected to celebs’ foul-mouthed Trump Derangement Syndrome (I’m looking at you, Robert De Niro; seek professional help). We’ve had enough of the gender lunacy they promote relentlessly. We’re done with their angry anti-Americanism. And we resent their support for elitist policies whose middle-class-destroying consequences they are shielded from by their wealth and privilege.

I don’t believe the Democrat Party and the entertainment industry (but I repeat myself) have much if any capacity for self-reflection, but they should take this learning moment as an opportunity to really understand the message America sent in November: we want the old Hollywood back, patriotic entertainers who didn’t bad-mouth America at every opportunity, maybe even the kind like Jimmy Stewart who actually went to war to defend our country. We want the sort of comedians like Bob Hope who could joke about politics and make everyone laugh, not just mock their political opponents. We want the kinds of singers who didn’t feel the need to put divisive activism front and center in their work. Don’t let your politics overwhelm your performance.

In short: shut up and sing.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior