For years the political left has made fools of themselves by sucking up to celebrities. Both in election season and out of it, always it’s the same story. Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Eva Longoria and the rest of them all come out to support the Democrat party.
Want to weigh up the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy? Then make sure George Clooney is on your side. Want to address income inequality? Well make sure you’ve got Taylor Swift on board.
Of course the whole thing is ridiculous. And conservatives have not been shy about pointing out that fact. Because it is ridiculous.
As Ricky Gervais said at the Golden Globes a few years back, most actors have spent less time in education than Greta Thunberg. The fact that you can pretend to be other people for a living, or sing, doesn’t mean you know how to run the world. Besides, it doesn’t even seem as though celebrity endorsements are much electoral help. Remember how many celebrities backed Hillary Clinton in 2016? The Democrat candidate for the Presidency that year had an almost complete, clean-sweep of America’s celebrity class. Sadly for Hillary, however, this country is mainly populated by non-celebrities who do not wish to have our nation’s border-policy — for instance — directed by Hollywood.
There was a time when Republicans used to gleefully point this out, and more. How low did the Democrats have to go? they asked. Did the nation really need to hear Leonardo DiCaprio’s views on voting before having the temerity to vote ourselves? There was a time that Republicans used to poke fun at all this, noting that politics is a serious business whereas entertainment is, well, entertainment. And while it is perfectly understandable that some ditzy actor might want to pretend to be a serious person by sounding forth about the importance of peace over war, say, why did politicians have to pretend to care about what these dolts did in their efforts to be taken seriously?
Of course some people said this was just sour grapes. Since most of the entertainment industry thinks it is best to look liberal, the Republicans have for decades had trouble recruiting celebrities to their own. They had Jon Voigt of course — a lovely man, but not someone who can single-handedly even the scales against the rest of Hollywood. There was Clint Eastwood too, although when the Republicans got him to speak at their annual national convention in 2012 the results were a reminder of why Clint is better scripted than not. The “empty chair” routine must go down as one of the most embarrassing things to have ever happened at a party convention. And that’s a really high bar.
So you might have thought that Republicans would be above the whole celebrity game by now. But oh no. That turned out to be one big fake. A pretense put up by the non-cool kids who ended up really caring about what the cool kids thought of them.
The cause of this revelation is Kanye West. Or the artist now known as “Ye.” Kanye West, as I shall continue to call him, may be many things. I am not the greatest judge of his music. Though he certainly seems to have a very high opinion of it, as do millions of others. But when it comes to coherent statements about the world, Kanye’s brain seems to be one big mass of neurons throwing out random sparks. As Donald Trump found out when he invited him to the Oval Office, no one can know with any certainty what is about to come out of Kanye’s mouth when it opens. Kanye himself usually looks like he’s unsure. Trump himself looked nervous whenever it happened, even on the brink of looking horrified. Just consider that for a moment, ladies and gentleman, a man whose pronouncements are so unpredictable that they make Donald Trump sweat.
But now he is back. Earlier this month Kanye was allowed back on Twitter and much of the conservative world seemed to think that this was a game-changer in the American political scene. The official House Republicans Judiciary Committee Twitter account posted a tweet praising West. Other conservatives leapt to welcome him back, shower him with praise and hang on his every word.
Unfortunately almost his next words were deeply anti-Semitic. In a weekend outburst he now notoriously announced that he was going to go “Death con 3 [by which he presumably meant “def con 3”] on JEWISH PEOPLE”. He continued conspiratorially that Jews had allegedly “toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever who opposes your agenda.”
For some of the conservatives who had recently been lavishing praise on him this proved a hard turn. If such an overtly anti-Semitic Tweet had been sent out by any Democrat-supporting celebrity the right in this country would be all over it — and rightly so. But because it came from the right´s newest and biggest mega-watt celebrity a whole bunch of folks kept strangely silent, with some actually coming out to defend his indefensible comments.
So here’s a rule: one everyone could benefit from sticking to. Just as we don´t try to squeeze water out of stones, don’t try to squeeze sense out of celebrities. Allow them to do what they do well. And the rest? Pull a veil over it. We should want entertainers to talk about politics about as much as we would want politicians to rap and dance. In other words. Not one bit.
The house prices are too damn high
Everybody knows how crazy property prices are in Manhattan, but news in yesterday’s Post really had me in the doldrums. Admittedly a three-bedroom townhouse selling for $4.19 million sounds like every day’s news. But the house in question is the narrowest house in town. In fact the whole house is just 9 foot, 6 inches wide. Reading this news I admit I just wanted to roll over and die. Not something there’d be the space to do if I could actually afford the house in question.
