|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
The media spent months pre-hyping Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. In its aftermath, stories claimed that the lip-synching sensation’s Instagram post drove half a million fans to not only buy overpriced merchandise, but to register to vote in the 2024 election.
The Kamala campaign embraced ‘Brat’ branding based on an album from a British half-Muslim pop star few Americans ever heard of. It brought out Beyonce to campaign (crucially not to sing) for Kamala who had tried to model her fanbase, the KHive, on Beyonce’s rabid Beyhive fans.
Kamala brought Oprah and Lady Gaga to Philly and Katy Perry to Pittsburgh. Julia Roberts cut an ad telling women to hide their votes from their husbands. In Michigan, white wife-killing enthusiast rapper Eminem headlined a Kamala rally while Obama rapped the opening of his ‘Lose Yourself’ (unintentionally revealing that he’s just as authentically black as Eminem.)
Bruce Springsteen shuffled out to perform at an Obama event for Kamala in Philly. The Kamala campaign brought Megan Thee Stallion to rap in Atlanta, dragged out what was left of the (Dixie) Chicks to the DNC and Lizzo to Detroit. Even the most faded has-beens like Lance Bass of NSYNC and Jennifer Aniston of Friends were tagged to shill for Kamala. Any celeb with even the slightest name recognition, past, present or future, was tasked with getting out the vote.
And the American people responded with a massive landslide which won not only the election, but the popular vote, for the man that all the celebrities had warned them not to vote for.
“This was really an historic, flawlessly run campaign,” Joy Reid raved on MSNBC. “Queen Latifah never endorses anyone. She had every prominent celebrity voice, she had Taylor Swift, the Swifties, she had Beyonce, the Beyhive, you could not have run a better campaign.”
Reid’s answer was that America was racist. But maybe Americans just hate celebrities?
If celebrity endorsements drove elections, America would have been run by Democrats since the Kennedy administration except for a two term Romney presidency. Apart from some immature teenagers and mentally ill people who not only pay $500 a pop to listen to a pop star lip sync music written by AI but actually build their identities around being their fans, most people view celebrities as entertainers not as moral authorities or thought leaders.
Americans don’t vote the way celebrities tell them to, but they just might vote against them.
Celebrity endorsements for insurance, mobile phone plans or candidates drive attention to the product, rather than unqualified enthusiasm for it. Advertisers understand this, the Kamala campaign didn’t. The attempt to build an armor of celebrities around Kamala was an insecure attempt to replicate Obama’s cult following without having any of the charisma. Obama cultivated celebrities because he successfully convinced 2008 voters that he was one.
Kamala could never convince anyone that she was a celebrity. Her charisma level would about suffice for a publicist or a receptionist, and yet she very badly wanted to be the biggest star. Gathering celebrities around her didn’t make her seem bigger, the way it did Obama, instead it made her appear smaller. It drove attention to the product. And the product was not competitive.
‘Brat’ and ‘Joy’ didn’t become Kamala’s ‘Hope and Change’. Building a wall of celebrities only briefly made her candidacy appear like a movement before everyone got a look inside. The interviews shattered the idea that Kamala was anything special. Whatever intangible quality makes ordinary people into stars wasn’t there. All that was there was a great emptiness.
Surrounded by celebrities, Kamala just looked like the dictator of a former Soviet republic who could pay $10 million to get Beyonce to perform at her birthday party. A country suffering from economic insecurity watched the spectacle of a billion dollar campaign throwing money around (while constantly texting supporters to demand another $5 (with monthly auto-renew)) to throw a party for the lamest little rich girl on earth while they were having trouble buying gas and bread.
The public likes celebrities to be entertaining. Trump bringing out Hulk Hogan was entertaining. Kamala summoning Beyonce, Springsteen or Lizzo to lecture on abortion, sexism, democracy and racism was about as much fun as falling asleep to NPR. The Kamala campaign had tried the ‘joy’ brand, but its celebrity entourage was a joyless assemblage of flickering star wattage.
Celebrities can’t make a bad product good, but they can make everyone hate it. And by the time they were done, most of the country had decided that they were not voting for Kamala.
Smart agents make sure that their clients don’t endorse bad products unless their careers are already on the way down. And smarter agents and celebrities kept their distance from the Kamala trainwreck. Even Taylor Swift kept it predictably coy, avoiding actual Kamala rallies, and delivering just the minimum amount of woke to keep her rabid fan base from canceling her.
Celebrities devalued Kamala and she devalued them. When all was said and done, intangible clout and hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent to launch the equivalent of New Coke. As Kamala sets out on her march to obscurity, the celebrities who celebrated her have also lost some of their wattage. The idea of the celebrity political endorsement is as dead as her career.
And deservedly so.
The Dixie Chicks complained during the Iraq War that people just wanted them to “shut up and sing”. But most people rightfully want entertainers to entertain them. Celebrities want to believe that they’re more important than they actually are. They’re not. Famous is not important. The ability to command attention is not the same thing as having your views taken seriously.
Making the jump from celebrity to leader, as Reagan did, requires thinking seriously about ideas and engaging with how people actually think and live. It also means leaving behind a wider audience that wants to hear you sing for a narrower one that wants to hear what you think.
At a Kamala rally in Atlanta, Megan Thee Stallion yelled out, “I know my ladies in the crowd love their body. And if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.”
Democrats have long rallied on these kinds of mindless celebrity shout-outs, but they do nothing except convince the public that both the candidate and the celebrity are hopelessly out of touch.
In a miserable economy, no one was turning to millionaires and billionaires for voting guidance. When times are hard, all the public wants of celebrities is to shut up and sing. And they couldn’t even do that.
I remember the Jefferson Airplane’s radio commercial for Levi’s ™ Jeans.
Cool, man. ~
The Dems lost because America rejects their “doctrine”. It wasn’t a matter of tactics, it is a matter of “doctrine”..
Barack wasn’t appealing either to intelligent and discerning people. Too much TV watching?
When you have a talented candidate, like Barak Obama, celebrities add a fizz to the excitement. But when it’s a hollow DEI dud like her, it points up that there’s no there there.
How is Brokeback Hasbeen Obama talented? He’s a boring speaker and wimpy weasel with zero charisma. He’s an empty suit.
You’re right about barry. Scumbag though he is, and unlike his wife, Bill clinton is a talented and skilled politician, and a very good liar.
Unlike Alzheimer Joe. That guy is the worst liar I’ve ever seen. You’d think he’d be good at it because he does it every time he opens his mouth except when he stuffing it with old man ice cream.
brokeback barry convinced the legion of leftnut woketards that he would stop the rising oceans and heal the planet with his shuck & jive chicongo community organizing skills until they swooned and fainted. but his genuine talents more likely took place in the in the shower stalls of bath houses and glory holes around the world.
You have him pegged. He actually did say that about the oceans and planet. Trump could get away with that as a joke but note Barely Barry, the glory hole gobbler. He’s just so ridiculous.
B. Hussein DID stop the rising ocean level!
The jug-eared prick walked out to the shore, smot his copy of “Rules for Radicals” on the rocks, and that combined with his majestic aura that went forth, caused the rising ocens to recede!
That’s how the punk had the confidence to buy that mansion by the seashore in Martha’s Vineyard (which currently does not allow ANY illegal immigrants to enter.)
Yeah, Martha’s Vineyard. By all accounts a pleasant place but I will NEVER visit that shit-hole. I hate rich cunts much more than I hate poor ones. They’re so deceptive it isn’t even funny. Just be who you are, you rich cunts. At least us poor people know we’re poor and usually don’t have pretensions.
You really think that Obama is talented huh? Oh really? Based on what evidence? At best Obama is a practiced liar and a beguiling grifter. His only real talent is for mesmerizing lowbrow sheeple who lack the intelligence to qualify as idiots useful or otherwise
You’re right. But that’s what IS the little prick’s talents.
You said it pal!!
Beyonce? What is this, the 1990s? An Austin Powers movie? She’s still alive? And the Dick Eating Chicks and that elephant seal, Lezzo?
Fucking lefties. They’re so behind the times it isn’t even funny. No wonder America hates them and crushed them in the election.
Does anybody watch late night TV anymore, or listen to anything Brokeback Hasbeen Obama sez? Or care about any left-wing icons? For that matter, is Oprah Winfrey still alive either?
No.
Every time I saw one of those celebrity endorsements of Camela I got a physical feeling of revulsion in my body.
Revulsion/repulsion/repugnance seem to be the main feelings the Kamel-ho brings out in us guys.
And those celebrity endorsements were the worst. Maya Rudolph? She was somebody over twenty years ago but she just embarrassed herself by gushing over the Ho. I guess she was happy to finally find a broad with an even bigger nose than hers.
I have to admit, I enjoyed watching the Kamel-ho crash and burn. The Minitru Media did all they could to convince the public that she’s a glamorous celebrity but they might as well have been selling a piece of dog shit.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Change Agent.
Only the elderly watch TV anymore. I should say mostly the elderly because I haven’t watched it or listened to any live news broadcasts since the lockdown hysteria.
I do love Bruce Springsteen’s music though.
Agree on Springsteen’s music. I love it. Always have, always will, but every time he opens his mouth about politics I can’t shut off the tv, radio, whatever fast enough.
If a celebrity endorsement changes your vote maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Anyone who is influences by one of these vapid, out of touch, deviants is not a serious person
Hold on there partner! I’m in my late 60s and I rarely if ever watch TV. When I do it’s to watch a sporting event or what’s on the Science channel. Other than that there’s no compelling reason to sit in front of the idiot box and vegetate my life away.
Besides, most of the crap that gets aired (especially the crap that’s aired by the alphabet soup channels) will lower your IQ and render you a moron. The kind of moron that’s easily susceptible to leftist/liberal propaganda.
Proof? The overwhelming majority of the MSM, the intellectually challenged Hollyweirders and the rest of the entertainment industry mutants all supported Kamala Harris.
DiNeros nasty threats against Trump Backfired on him just like most all of Hollyweird that supports the Demo-Rats Americans are voting against the Choice from Hollyweird
Taylor Swift’s songs “written by Ai” That’s funny and what a commentary on lefties’ teen aged level of emotional development and attention spans of fleas.
Kamala did much better in areas without voter ID which included the more celebrity focused West coast. I think most people find it offensive Kamala paid the celebrities including a rumored 2.6 million to Lizzo. Not a good indication for leading a nation and helping its economy.
Excellent points about paying celebrities. Blatant bribes, and paydays for the celebs.
I didn’t zoom on the NE, but in the midwest and west, it looks like she lost the states that have voter ID and won the ones that didn’t.
How is Lezzo the whale even a celebrity? She’s morbidly obese and doesn’t even have a nice body under all her blubber, like some fat chicks do. I mean, fat girls can be sexy but she sure isn’t. And put some clothes on, please. I heard her yammering on TV once and turned the channel. Give me some Billie Holliday or Dolly Parton.
Cat,
Every one of those celebrities cost Kamala’s campaign BIG TIME!
The incompetent bitch raised a billion bucks, and STILL went into the red. (Imagine that fool trying to manage our economy 🥺)
Oprah Windbag invoiced for 1 million dollars alone.
Trump, by contrast, managed his campaign finances extremely frugal. (The contrast is jaw dropping.)
That’s a very valid comparison. 🙂
>> “Celebrities want to believe that they’re more important than they actually are.” <<
When Ringo Starr sold prized Beatles collectibles for charity in 2015 through Julien's Auction House, a Julien's employee who dealt with him said, "Ringo underestimated how much his items would bring. Most celebrities overestimate how much their items will bring."
I’ve always thought Ringo is cool. That movie “Caveman” he did is a classic.
Indeed he did! Most people of my era would give almost anything to have a Ringo collectible.
And the celebrities who endorsed her all live in their elite bubbles with the political elites.
NOT ONE OF THEM notices the additional security surrounding them.
Lee Greenwood’s endorsement of Trump was SINCERE, and the audiences knew it.
The has-been virtue_signaling lefties who endorsed Harris were INSINCERE, and the audiences knew that too.
.
… and the Dixie Chick’s singer was insincere from the start of her career, and genuine fans of Country Music (like me) knew it. After all,.that bitch wore her makeup like Tammy Faye Baker!
What an INSULT to fans of Country Music (!!), that she sees us as idiots who would go for that!! (Her act was aimed at the newly minted Suburban Variant of “country music” fandom. (Gretchen Wilson brought many of those decieved suburban types back to reality with her classic first album…..and its smash hit “Red Neck Woman”.).) (Gretchen’s follow-up album and single — “Here For The Party” — tookas swipe at that Dixie Chick’s act with the classic couplet: ” I may not be a Ten / But the guys all say I clean up good ” .)
Country Music MUST be sincere!
Leave the posing and posturing to rock music. David Bowie demonstrated this in the 1970s ….. On Purpose. (He got some interesting film roles out of it too, natch.)
David Bowie was a very talented guy. I don’t know about all that Ziggy Stardust tranny stuff but “The Jean Genie” and “Golden Years” are great songs.
Wasn’t Ziggy Stardust about Jimi Hendrix?
I don’t know, probably. Jimi died way too young, I remember that.
Yeah, he had some good songs 🙂
So this is how she raised close to a billion dollars and is now $20 million in debt. Too funny. BTW, who are these people? I have never heard of most of them. Glad that is true. What losers!
Send these Celebrities to Celebes.
Let them fight off the cannibals. ~
Better yet, how about sending them to Ceres? It’s a dwarf planet in the middle of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They would be doing something far more useful and productive rather than preening before the cameras uttering vacuous bullsh*t..
I’d actually like to visit Ceres but I admit it would be a suitable banishment point for the lefties. And no spacesuits for them!
Geez, come on now! Have a heart! At least provide them with a warm blanket and a flash light!
I don’t know what the hell they’re gonna do with a flashlight but it sounds humane!!
CELEBRITIES… yes, but a majority of Americans didn’t see her rallies. OPRAH WAS PAID A MILLION TO APPEAR? Celebrities were paid too? $20 MILLION for one night? SOUNDS MORE LIKE BRIBES TO ME!
HISTORY BOOKS will write: “The Tampon that Saved America.”
Who in the hell picked Tampon Tim? It’s possible they had never seen him walk into an audience of thousands. They only looked at his Com-Left past, agenda, and his current positions, all radical. When he walked out for his DNC speech, SHE LOST! Then during other speeches, they showed him, WEIRDO AND FREAK! Memes of him and Richard Simmons entering the stage did them in. Then the lies and Stolen Honor. (I did shed a tear for his son while Tampon Tim was speaking. “That’s my dad.” But then I noticed that when the family came on stage, TT showed his true self and mistreated his son, other times too. I can only imagine what he was telling the son backstage.)
The Accumulation Effect of piling on his WEIRDNESS added to her WEIRDNESS… DJT LANDSLIDE.
Tim must have been a can-can dancer in another life., lol.
Yeah, that old man is disgusting. And why does he look so old?
Nothing say values and integrity like taking a bribe.
As the late Groucho Marx said, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others.”
I’d rather think the big election losers last week are WOKE, DEI, and the socialist/progressive/Marxist indoctrinations of the past two generations.
When the actors slandered me as fascist, Nazi, and garbage I knew my life puts the lie to everything Democrats were/are pushing.
As for that guy in the New Orleans pride parade with the sign declaring “We’re queer, we’re here, and we’re coming for the children” ….don’t do it!
“…“This was really an historic, flawlessly run campaign,” Joy Reid raved on MSNBC. “Queen Latifah never endorses anyone. She had every prominent celebrity voice, she had Taylor Swift, the Swifties, she had Beyonce, the Beyhive, you could not have run a better campaign.”…”
Someone posted that clip on X.. I hope dems listen to Joy. That’s what constitutes a flawless campaign, lmao. When she followed that with Latifa never endorses anyone, I about spewed my coffee, and it just kept getting better. All the campaign’s many glaring mistakes and unforced errors went right over Joy’s head. It’s just that America is irredeemably racist and misogynist, of course! Saying the “Jesus Is Lord,” people are “at the wrong rally,” was brilliant, not needlessly stupid and alienating to a large segment of the population.
Her comments on “Uneducated white women,” were telling as well. When she says it, you can hear the contempt in her voice and see it in her expression. And by uneducated, she doesn’t mean illiterate, she means not college educated/indoctrinated. This from someone who carps endlessly about privilege. Joy can’t fathom that their best interests and concerns might be different from her own. Epic arrogance and condescension is not how one wins friends and influences people.
But maybe Americans just hate celebrities?’ Not hate, but ignore. I recognized only a couple of talented artists from that list.
I would changed the word”brought” out Oprah to “bought” out Oprah. They wasted millions on those harlequins, court jesters, town criers and travel minstrel shows. Got her nothin’.
Cue Dr. Thomas Sowell: “Why do actors — people whose main talent is faking emotions — think that their opinions should be directing the course of political events in the real world? Yet it is a mistake that they have been making as far back as John Wilkes Booth.”
June 2023. Las Vegas. A Santana concert. Classic Santana.
All was good, but Carlos had to spout off not once, but three separate times on his liberal political views. He ruined the show, IDC what his political opinions are. That is not why I attended.
I’ll never EVER attend another of his concerts.
I’m a big fan of American, Latin and Brazilian jazz and particularly bossa nova jazz. There’s nothing like it in the entire music genre.
For the daring, enjoy listening to this:
It was like watching American Idol
What a joke
Oprah busted her britches on this one. In Ancient Rome, whenever celebrities injected themselves into politics, they were swiftly taken out and executed. Their crime? Abusing and misusing their platform.
Who cares what celebrities have to say? Many of them have had little education beyond high school, have personal problems, substance abuse problems, spend their lives pretending to be someone else reciting lines or lyrics written by others. They might have had interesting lives in the entertainment world that would make them interesting people to have a drink with but I wouldn’t take advice from them on what food to feed my pet let alone who to vote for. But that’s just me. Millions of People magazine readers seem to feel otherwise.
“Queen Latifa never endorses
Anyone.”
She only did because she was paid!
You can’t replace somebody with nobody…
“Things find a way to survive, the truth is like this too. It pushes its way up through the sands of lies and deceptions so that others may find it.” –Ancient Anaiz Indian proverb–
Jesus told Pilot before he condemned him to death that, “The truth will set your free,” upon which Pilot asked, “What is the truth?” The truth won’t set anyone free who doesn’t have the moral, ethical, nor personal integrity, much less the honesty to accept it. For them the truth simply becomes another obstacle to progress in a moral relativistic labyrinth of ideologically conflicted dogma in which everyone has their own truth. And that pseudo-science, which has become a religion unto itself, and its New Age Gospel’s “No one, plus nothing, times blind chance equals everything,” is humanity’s societal salvation.
So how many are going to Leave America when Trump is Sworn in again in January? Their welcome to leave all they have to do is pack their bags and hop in their Private Jets/Yachts and Leave