When celebrity endorsements can backfire in politics
Recently, an old university friend, who is now a senior BBC producer, told me about when he helped assemble the acts for a major celebrity fundraising concert. The usual illustrious names were present but the fun was dealing with the fossils and the failures eager to resurrect their careers in the guise of charity. Apparently a once-famous British rock star pleaded that he desperately wanted to sing in the climate change gig because, “the bloody climate is awful and we have to change it.” No joke.
Which brings us to the 100-plus celebrities who have just given their names to a campaign to stop Donald Trump becoming president. Bashing the famous and beautiful is too easy, largely pointless and, anyway, most of these actors, singers and writers probably have genuine concerns about the putrid Trump winning the election. He’s a lump on the body politic and for all our sakes needs to be defeated.
But if anything plays into his smooth, pink hands, it is the glossy vision of front-cover millionaires telling people how to vote and what to believe. I’m not sure who planned the Democrat convention but the idea, for example, of giving self-consciously provocative Sarah Silverman such prominence was about as sensible as booking Don Cherry to host the Giller Prize. Just because the few find Silverman funny doesn’t mean the many find her funny. Just because the few think she has something to say doesn’t mean the many think she has something to say.
It’s this myopia, a form of political solipsism, that eats away at progressive causes the world over and it goes far deeper than merely trying to use show business comrades to win votes.
Reluctant as I am to use an overused term, elitism is a noxious election ploy. Trump may be enormously wealthy and backed by the similarly rich but his street cleverness is that he tries to smudge rather than polish all that. Even his celebrities — far fewer in number of course — are rough around the edges and appear less distant and glamorous.
If Hillary Clinton wants a lesson in how to get it all terribly wrong, she need only look to Britain and the Brexit vote. I’ve just returned from England and some of the commentary about the referendum is hideously misplaced. Xenophobia may have played a small part in the vote but the underlying factor was an electoral finger being given to the establishment, the powerful and the self-proclaimed wise and good.
People were tired of being told, not only by the leadership of all three major parties but also by the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, J.K. Rowling, David Beckham and Elton John, that leaving the European Union was a bad idea. Those who felt left behind by the country’s prosperity and advances shouted, in the only way they could, that they were angry. I believe they were wrong but I also know it wasn’t the place of those who never turn right when they board an airliner to patronize millions of workingclass men and women.
In the U.S., the reaction is even less rational, spiced up by the gun fetish, the perversion of Christianity into patriotic fundamentalism and the tragedy of race and racism distorting almost every issue. That’s a dangerous mingling and Trump is just the man to add the final ingredient.
Genuinely gifted liberal politicians have known how to respond to all this and how to react to mass anxieties and even fears. Roosevelt knew, Truman knew, even Bill Clinton knew, but most in the modern Democratic Party seem to have forgotten.
Politics is about perception as much as reality and the way ideas are communicated is as significant as the ideas themselves.
The left already has the support of voters who watch 30 Rock and enjoy raunchy comedy. It’s the rest of America, most of America, that has to be won over and that just isn’t happening.
I once thought Trump didn’t stand a chance of becoming president of the United States.
Now I am not so sure and that terrifies me. Perhaps Hollywood will make a movie about it all and then Trump’s critics can explain how it all went so dreadfully wrong.