Encouraging news from the country of America, where the antidote to the problem of a TV-celebrity president is clear. More celebrity. Hey – what’s the worst that could happen?
More celebrity, different celebrities, bigger celebrities – never let it be said that the elite centre is out of ideas. They’re certainly not out of celebrities. Now that Oprah has crushed their fever dreams and stated clearly that she won’t run for president, the search simply moves to other entertainers who could move the dial – just like entertainers have always moved the dial in US politics, according to data I seem unable to lay my hands on but is clearly out there, no matter how many times the tactic ultimately correlates with situations in which a gaggle of stars break their promise to move to Canada.
When journalism goes tits up (next Easter?), I plan to found a left-leaning political consultancy/thinktank called The Institute of Celebrity Studies, which tells politicians exactly what they want to hear about how important celebrities are to whichever social and economic programme on which they’ve set their little hearts. Join me. You can tell them how the celebrities connect with the voters emotionally, how they reach down mines in the way that ideas can’t, how this influencer called Russell Brand won the presidency of England for one guy. By the time it gets to election night and the bed gets shat, the candidate has already paid you. And you know what? Don’t even feel bad about it. You gave them a great party. Tell me some other way they’re going to get on stage with Beyoncé/have their picture taken with Lena Dunham/access Russell Brand’s kitchen that doesn’t end in a restraining order.
Anyway, on with the show. The latest celebrity to be hailed as the answer to the question “who can stop us losing?” is Taylor Swift. Sunday night saw Swift exhort her Instagram followers to vote in the upcoming midterms, in a post which also endorsed her native Tennessee’s Democratic Senate hopeful Phil Bredesen. This event has been glossed with that most ecstatically grateful of journalistic cliches: the breaking of a silence. Taylor Swift has broken her silence. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, Swift’s studied neutrality on politics drove commentators quite mad, with endless thinkpieces churned out on the morality of her declining to say which way she was voting. The volume of rubbish written about why the pop singer didn’t break her silence could have created 40,000 landfill jobs in swing states. Counterpoint thinkpieces suggesting that, lyrically, Taylor had made her affiliations perfectly clear. (To some extent, I agree: Blank Space is about write-in candidates and you will get tired of arguing about this before I do.)
But let us return to the present day. Barely 24 hours after the Instagram post, Swift used one of multiple acceptance speeches at the American Music Awards to double down on her message to people to vote. “This award, and every single award given out tonight, were voted on by the people,” Taylor pointed out as she picked up artist of the year and prepared for a gear-crunching local radio link. “And you know what else is voted on by the people? The midterm elections on November 6. Get out and vote. I love you guys.”
According to vote.org, the non-partisan organisation which registers people to vote and which Swift named in her post, a welter of registrations followed – especially from young people. This has been taken positively by some Democrats, though various pollsters have warned against regarding Swift as a positive market-mover for the Democrats in Tennessee. If her intervention nationalises the race, that may be to the Republican incumbent’s advantage.
Should the Republicans be worried more generally about stars coming out for their opponents? It must be said that Republicans have historically been intensely relaxed about celebrities endorsing the Democrats. Indeed, it often feels like the only people yet to realise just how intensely relaxed are the celebrities themselves, who find the idea that they could be something other than electorally covetable quite unfathomable. Although not as unfathomable as the idea that they may actually move the dial in the other direction.
That, alas, may well be the judgment of the Trump team as far as Taylor is concerned. On Tuesday, Donald Trump told reporters that he liked Taylor Swift’s music 25% less now, and if he continues to draw special attention to Swift’s position, it will presumably be on the basis of his favourite calculation: will this helpfully enrage my base?
Enraging much of his own base in a different way, meanwhile, is postmodernism’s Kanye West, whose decision to go rogue on the celebrity community is now so advanced that he met Trump at the White House today. Kanye had lunch with the president, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. In advance of the meeting, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, stated they would discuss matters such as prison reform – Kushner may feel he has an increasing interest in this subject – how to prevent gang violence, how to reduce violence in Chicago and manufacturing resurgence in the US. West’s recent call for the repeal of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery, appeared to be off the table.
Even so, this is quite the summit, and with Taylor now coming out for the Democrats, an indication that perhaps we’ve been looking at things the wrong way. Far from the story of the past tumultuous few years being of elites v the left behind, or open v closed, it is highly possible that the central value divide is Taylor v Kanye, and has been ever since he interrupted her 2009 VMA acceptance speech for best video. Everything else – even Trump – has in fact been merely leading up to this ultimate showdown. This is the real battle. The other stuff was just the undercard.
Something to think about, anyway. In the meantime, other shakedowns are occurring. According to various reports, West’s longtime friends and supporters Jay-Z and Beyoncé have had quite their limit of his nonsense, and are distancing themselves from him and wife Kim Kardashian, who herself has had a couple of meetings in the White House. Down in the B-list, meanwhile, the debate is threatening to turn violent, with Kanye detractor Lana Del Rey deploying a double negative against Kanye supporter Azealia Banks. “u know the addy,” Lana said to Azealia on the internet. “Pull up anytime. Say it to my face. But if I were you, I wouldn’t. I won’t not fuck you the fuck up. Period.”
It wasn’t period, inevitably, and has since descended into a vicious tit-for-tat between the pair about bad plastic surgery, supposed weight gain, fat-shaming, psychiatric illness, OxyContin addiction and racism, to which the only reaction is: can I please go back to 2008?
And the answer, alas, is: no, you can’t.
Indeed, if you are looking for a way out of 2018 politics, celebrities are unlikely to provide it. I keep hearing that certain types of elites only want to change the world in a way that doesn’t change their world, and the idea that politics needs more celebrity feels very much of a piece with this dated (and failed) sensibility. The biggest star of the reality-TV era is now the most powerful political leader on Earth. Yet his opponents continue to fall upon other celebrities as a potential exit route from the horror. It recalls that bit in The Big Lebowski, where the Dude has just had his head flushed down the toilet by some thugs, and they ask him again where the money is. “It’s down there somewhere,” he deadpans. “Let me take another look.” Maybe the answer to Trump is to take another look down the same U-bend. Or maybe not.
For those who absolutely still insist that celebrity endorsements/candidates are the answer, I can only suggest one last roll of the dice: Tom Hanks. Yes, Tom Hanks, whose agents have meticulously curated a career of Great American Stories for him, and who is probably the only celebrity who could walk into a bar anywhere in the United States and have most of the customers fall over themselves to buy him a drink. If he won’t do it – and I would really caution against getting your hopes up – it might be time to pivot away from this community. They have the answers to so many big and important questions – but not, alas, this one.
