"When I first invited George Clooney to blog after a screening of Good Night, and Good Luck in New York a few months ago, he said he wasn't sure how a blog worked."
I read this today on Arianna Huffington's media/blog/whatever site. Don't get me wrong, I classify myself as liberal and enjoy what she writes and what she stands for but this really honed in on my annoyance with our preoccupation with celebrities who do other things besides be celebrities. It aggravates me that celebrities act so exhausted by their fame and seem to want to illustrate redundantly that they, too, are a part of the American public (regardless of whether they originate from the US or not, come on, your life is in Hollywood, how much more American can you get?) and they have feelings about politics, war, hunger, welfare, human rights, you name it and they have an opinion.
Case in point: Angelina Jolie. The fact that she like travels the world to use her fame to work with the UN not only insinuates that the UN itself is preoccupied with celebrity fame and all that it can bring to starving children, AIDS patients, and other third world country issues...be/c who really cares if you're under 8 and live in Darfur with no hope of any real help from the UN or Angelina Jolie for that matter (unless she adopts you. And again, don't get me wrong, I myself am a child of adoption so I am all for it), which is an embarassment to an organization like the UN. So why all the hoo haw about the latest celebrity getting appointed to some ambassador position with the UN? Its inappropriate that the UN and other political organizations (although I can't think of any, I am sure that the Democratic Party appreciates the money and efforts of people like Clooney and, say, Susan Sarandon) prop these celebrities up with a sort of above normal intellectual standing compared to average Americans - or even those Americans devoted towards educating themselves (by educating I mean college degrees and higher) who work towards bettering the bottom level problems, like working in, say, Phoenix for a veterans hospital, sans the UN glamour or a hot button controversy (Celebrities, your ticket to intellectual acceptance is to pick on the Bush administration loudly. Totally proves you're wayyy smarter than your peers), which in the end always gives more press to the celebrity voicing their opinions than issue itself.
So yes, I am saying that it is unfair that those celebrities get such an elevated soap box and real people who don't have the financial luxury to do such glamo philanthropist work miss out on opportunities to work side by side with leaders in the UN, or get articles on CNN.com, to sound off about our current administration. It simply hammers home that the average voter does not matter.
Have money, will vote. Have celebrity status, will get at good amount of column inches in not just US Weekly but maybe even the Washington Post, too.
Its almost like we are rewarding or congratulating these celebrities for doing something with their time and money outside of just looking good, acting (which I do believe is a talent, but being a celebrity, eh, not so much), and otherwise just spending cash...and it bothers me so many of them are uneducated. I mean to get a real position with the UN, you typically have to be fluent in two languages, like French and English, and also need a very advanced degree, a J.D., a Ph.D, what have you.
I am not saying that celebrities shouldn't think or concern themselves with anything other than trivial material matters, and I am not saying that they're stupid, its just that I don't think organizations, be it media or political, should care what they do or think any more than they care about what the average American really does.
Sure, I might agree with the majority of what these liberal celebs say but to be perfectly clear its nothing that any other half liberal has thought themselves. I don't think it ways in any more heavily than if my old political science professor thinks. In fact, he probably knows more than they do but who really cares what he thinks? He has never been named People's Sexiest Man Alive.