Every day now, it seems like another unlikely celebrity is speaking out on the presidential election. I understand how these artists must feel — I can’t stop reading campaign news and refreshing the latest polls, either. But there’s something pretty surreal about seeing, say, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel remix the classic "D— in a Box" as a pro-Obama clip called "Vote in the Box." (Yes, this actually happened, and while the video has mysteriously vanished from YouTube during the time I spent writing this post, I swear it was funny.) Meanwhile, you’ve got cavalcades of mostly apolitical rappers lining up to contribute verses packed with talking points to Russell Simmons and DJ Green Lantern’s Yes We Can: The Mixtape. (The mixtape is totally solid and worth a free download, as it happens.) Then there was that fairly hilarious Moveon.org ad directed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Doug Liman where, like, Serena van der Woodsen and Dan Humphrey rag on John McCain. (Check it out below.) And those are just the three best examples from the past few days! Put it all together and it’s clear that this election cycle is bringing out civic engagement from across the pop-culture map in a way I’ve never witnessed before.
Of course, I’m biased here. I’m most definitely the kind of guy who loves well-crafted entertainment with political overtones, so of course I’m enjoying all this. (It also helps that I’m a big supporter of Sen. Obama, who’s the beneficiary of virtually all these pop-culture PSAs.) But what do you think? What have your favorite celeb endorsements of the season been? Or have you just had enough of all this? Cast your ballot with a comment below…
More on pop-culture and politics:
Leonardo DiCaprio et al. tell you not to vote (?)
PopWatch sorts out Madonna’s politically charged tour video
Conservative Hollywood unites for An American Carol
Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson weighs in
Comments (1-9) of 9 Add your comment
That PSa with Penn Badgley and Blake Lively is pretty hilarious.
Much as I’d love to watch it, I refuse to support MoveOn.org. I wish they really would just do as their name suggests. They’ve become the same agents of division they used to decry on the other side.
I tend to instinctively lose respect for a celebrity that tell me how to vote, especially when the celebrities seem no more informed than the average person, they just happen to have a public forum. They’re also, for the most part, disturbingly out of touch with most of America. (I say this as someone who works in the industry and regularly hears anyone in the middle of the country referred to as “hicks,” “yokels” or just plain “backwards.”) I wait for the day when people are encouraged not to vote for a particular candidate or to just “vote or die” but encouraged to thoroughly educate themselves on the candidates and their parties and THEN vote. So many of these celebrities contribute to the harmful idea that one choice is right and one is wrong, an idea that not only breeds division and, potentially hate, but lacks any sense of empathy.
I don’t listen to celebrities because they are stupid and mostly uninformed. Like the poster below said, they are out of touch with the rest of America. Personally I think that people campaigning should quit spending millions and millions of dollars on stupid ads because honestly I am not going to vote for you based on some stupid ad. I wish that the public would do the research themselves and decide on the candidate they want instead of deciding to vote for this one or that one because some stupid moron celebrity said to.
I think it’s a mistake to assume that all actors and stupid and/or out of touch, the same way they shouldn’t assume that all middle-Americans are stupid yokels. I can’t fault them for doing PSAs–if I had that kind of forum, I’d damn well use it, and so would most people. Just because they say it doesn’t mean we have to buy it, but they can certainly buy it. Also, I can’t blame people like MoveOn for picking a horse–clearly Sen. Obama is a candidate more clearly in alignment with their mission as a non-profit–if you’ve got a horse in the race, why not pick it publicly? This IS a race after all, isn’t it?
Oops, sorry–typo. I meant to say that basically, it’s their right to say what they want–that maddening thing called “free speech” that everyone hates until it’s taken away from them.
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