With Friends Like These…

I don’t know about you dear readers, but I for one liked my celebrities a lot more when they were pretty faces, marginally talented musicians or drunken reality-TV stars. Now, it seems that I can’t get through a US Weekly issue (my main source for political commentary) without hearing about this celebrity or that celebrity who is in love with Obama and trying to influence my decision in the matter. Why do we care what celebrities have to say about politics?

After all, if I was given the opportunity to ask the breathtaking Scarlett Johansson a question, I doubt seriously if it would pertain to her thoughts on politics; more likely I would be concerned with gathering as much information as possible regarding the impossibly small underpants she barely donned in Lost in Translation. Similarly, am I going to be asking superstar producer will.i.am about his reasons for supporting Obama, or am I going to be smacking him for penning the “politically” charged anthem Fergalicious?

Pop culture icons as political cheerleaders are hardly a new concept in either Hollywood or Washington DC, but they do seem to be getting more prevalent as well as more annoying. In 1964, the actor (the talent he was most well-known for at the time) Ronald Reagan delivered a rousing speech in support of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater ultimately leading to Goldwater’s defeat (Just kidding, Goldwater lost because he was mostly a libertarian (Latin for ‘squandered vote’)).

Was this the first known example of a celebrity as a political cheerleader in history? For the sake of argument, and also because I don’t want to do any more research, we’ll say yes. Did “The Gipper” have any more political credibility than Ms. Johansson or Mr. Will.i.am? Well Reagan did eventually become the President of the United States, but will.i.am has another Black Eyed Peas album coming out in 2009, so pending that albums’ release, I’d say it’s a tossup!