Happy Election Day to readers who are in states with elections.
One feature of U.S. politics in the past few decades is endorsements of politicians, and media coverage of those endorsements, by Hollywood celebrities. For example, Kevin Spacey previously made the news for talking about the “greatness” of Barack Obama, for endorsing Hillary Clinton, and for righteously condemning Donald Trump. Today, however, he is in the news for allegedly having done some stuff that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton probably wouldn’t want to publicly support.
Now that celebrities are in the news as potential sexual harassers will we at least be freed from having to hear about their political beliefs?
[Foreign readers: what happens in parliamentary systems? Do people in Germany get excited when a German actor endorses a German political party? Does the media give a lot of coverage to the voting plans of German movie stars?]
In Germany an actor would less likely openly support a party, though it might happen sometimes, than an actor in the USA.
If you identify as left-leaning in the USA, there aren’t to many parties left, except maybe something obscure. In Germany, you have three left parties as a natural choice.
So he will rather support some or all the hot political issues, like to fight global warming, save the third world, fair trade, welcome refugees, diversity, feminism, gender pay gap. To name only some in no specific order.
In the United Kingdom nobody would take much notice, including the media. It would be assumed that the celebrity would be left-leaning and incline towards the Labour Party so their support would be “priced in”.
Also, historically, celebrities who have actually contested elections have done badly, with Glenda Jackson a notable exception.
One of the most spectacular flops of recent years was when Esther Rantzen, a well-known television presenter and journalist, contested Luton South in 2010 on an anti-corruption platform (the sitting MP, who had already decided to stand down, was one of the worst offenders in the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal). The end result was that she got just over 4 per cent of the vote.
It’s the same in Australia – celebrity endorsements don’t exist, and if they did, they’d be seen pretty cynically. There would be a strong perception that most celebrities support the left anyway, and that support would ‘priced in’.
But then, of course, we don’t have to ‘get out the vote’ in Australia – compulsory voting changes many aspects of elections.
If it wasn’t for the Oscars, US Hollywood starts would not be so diluted in thinking that they are above the law and supper smart in everything they do and thus endorse politician.
Unfortunately, many Americans have fallen to those celebrities and politician use them to connect with the voters. And just like with Weinstein case, once an actor or politician is accused of something bad, everyone lines up to be the first to denounce the accused.
Speaking of the Oscars, to me, that’s once a year self-patting on the back event by the inner circles of Hollywood stars for which viewers are suspended and amazed!
In India, not only celebrity endorsements work great, many actors/actresses frequently end up as members of parliament and/or ministers at central or state level.
In numerous cases, previous criminal behaviour on part of the celebrity neither affects endorsements nor their elections. On the contrary, a celebrity, when caught in criminal activity, increases political endorsements to get protection from prosecution in return.
I can’t recall any Swedish celebrity endorsements recently. They tend to be hardcore revolutionary communists or the like if you look them up, so perhaps it’s for the best.
Adam is correct about Australia. There may be celebrity endorsements here, but I can’t remember anyone this century, and I follow politics here.
A famous rock singer (Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil) did stand for Parliament a few years ago and won, but he was a lawyer by training, won in a safe seat and became a minister. He had a reputation amongst insiders as one of the clueier and more diligent ministers, before he was brought down by a scandal that may not have been his fault (and may not even have been scandalous).