The Audacity of Hope
Celebs can’t save conservatives
CONSERVATIVES have long wanted to separate entertainment from politics, but suddenly they seem more willing to accept the intersection now that entertainers are showing them some love. They shouldn’t be such easy marks.
Kanye West nearly broke Twitter last week. It started with him tweeting out that he loves “the way Candace Owens thinks” and spiraled from there. His appreciaton for Owens, an African-American conservative activist, was the start of a multi-day tweetstorm that would include praise of President Trump and a photo of West in a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Liberals were apoplectic, and conservatives enjoyed every minute of it. Comedian Kumail Nanjiani tweeted that it was “the worst twitter day in twitter history,” with comedian Billy Eichner responding, “nightmare.”
Conservatives, starving for representation in mainstream culture, embraced West immediately. It was glorious watching liberal heads explode because one celebrity dared to say something politically unconventional.
The reaction to the Kanye West tweets was reminiscent of the way conservatives are overly excited about the reboot of “Roseanne,” in which the main character Roseanne Conner, played by Roseanne Barr, is a Trump voter. Little about the show is actually conservative yet the existence of a character who isn’t a liberal is thrilling.
But conservatives shouldn’t be so thirsty.
Part of the danger is that the unpredictable West can reverse himself at any moment. Democrats found this out the hard way for themselves. In August of 2015, the Democratic Party’s official Twitter account gleefully declared, “Last night @kanyewest declared his candidacy for president in 2020. Welcome to the race, Mr. West. Glad to have you,” after he ranted onstage that he’s running for president. Whoops.
Plus, West isn’t espousing ideas on free markets or lower taxes; we have no idea what his actual political opinions are. As Ed Krayewski wrote in The Post last week, “West’s praise for Trump focuses largely on style not substance ... The contrarian West is naturally attracted to the contrarian Trump.” And, in fact, over the weekend West tweeted that anti-gun activist Emma Gonzalez is his “hero.”
Republicans are hoping that West speaking out will allow for other people to speak out against the liberal establishment, too.
In a video about the tweets, conservative personality Ben Shapiro said, “Something magical has happened.” He notes that “if Republicans won 15 percent of the black vote, they’d never lose another election.”
The problem with that hope is that, despite liberal belief to the contrary, celebrity endorsements don’t generally matter. (Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama was, arguably, the exception that proved the rule.) If they did, President Hillary Clinton would be in the White House and West would have no reason to proclaim his love for Trump on Twitter.
It’s unlikely that West — or Chance the Rapper, who last week tweeted “Black people don’t have to be Democrats” — would be able to sway much if any of the black vote.
What they might be able to do, though, is make alternative, yet still completely mainstream, political ideas not so toxic to the careers of entertainers. That would be a win for the right even if they don’t change any minds.
Shapiro mentions that in Hollywood there is a secret group called “Friends of Abe” for conservatives working in the entertainment industry who feel they have to keep their politics under wraps, lest their careers be destroyed for it. It would be nice if such a group didn’t have to keep its membership a secret.
Yet hopes for even that are quickly dashed. Just the week before, Shania Twain was forced to apologize for saying she would have voted for Trump in the last election. Twain is Canadian, so she was apologizing for a purely hypothetical vote, but the avalanche of outrage against her comments left her little choice. On Friday, Chance the Rapper also apologized, calling his comments “poorly timed.”
Those on the right who have long wanted for celebrities to cut out the political talk should still want that. On the other hand, breaking down the monolith opinion in Hollywood, and seeing more nonliberal representation from celebrities, is something that would be good for us all.
Lockstep opinion is boring and the antithesis of creativity. But if conservatives think Kanye and Roseanne are the keys to political success, they have another thing coming.