The Cult of (Political) Celebrity

I apologize for being so myopic about the California Recall election that just took place, but you know, I'm a Californian, and that's what we do. We tend to care only about what is going on in our fair state. It's sort of a microcosm of how Americans are, in general, a whole nation with its bifocals pointing downward, never peaking up through the top portion of the lens to notice that the rest of the world isn't on the same page, and, in fact, has long since retired the book we're still reading.

In California, though, we are not only self-focused to an alarming degree, but we've apparently also begun to blur our concepts of fiction and nonfiction.

It's happened before, and obviously, on Tuesday, it happened again. There's something that makes some semblance of sense in this thing, electing celebrities to public office. They often posses traits that are identified with leadership, don't they?--a command of the camera, the ability to enunciate their words, a certain affability and ease in working a crowd. Never mind they may not have had any political experience or any kind of record of proven accomplishments that have any relevance at all to creating public and economic policy.

Sure, Ronald Reagan was the president of the Hollywood-based Screen Actors Guild in the late 1940's and early 50's--and, in that capacity, he corroborated with the witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In fact, HUAC considered him a "friendly witness," and as such, he willingly named names and helped to extinguish the careers of numerous of his colleagues. See his 1947 HUAC testimony at CNN.com

So, if busting your friends for suspected affiliation with alleged communist-front organizations is enough political experience to get you elected governor of California, and then President of the United States, well, then no wonder why Ronald Reagan was at the head of the celebrity-cum-politician class.

It's hard to think of a sillier celebrity than Sonny Bono, isn't it? That short guy, always wearing outlandish costumes, bickering with his then-wife and showbiz partner, Cher, and often, easily, being overshadowed by her.

Perhaps his mega-stardom in the '60s and '70s, followed by a bad break with Cher and subsequent plummet into obscurity provided him just the kind of perspective he needed to enter into politics, first becoming mayor of Palm Springs in 1988, and then a right-leaning US Congress member from 1994 til his death in 1998. Selfless public service drove him, no doubt, as he actively worked to demonize the "gay agenda" during the "Contract with America" era of the US Congress--and, and in so doing, demonize his own lesbian daughter, Chastity.

Fred Grandy as "Gopher" (left)

Fred Grandy in his later role as a US Congressman

Apparently, playing a yeoman-purser on TV�s The Love Boat is enough experience to land you in the House of Representatives in Iowa. What the hell is a yeoman-purser, anyway?

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During the crazy days of anxiety before Tuesday�s Recall election, Natasha said something to me that really helped to refine my thinking on this phenomenon. She said that, in other countries, there's really not a culture of celebrity like there is here, and that politicians are the celebrities. Being that Nat is from South Africa, she holds citizenship in a country home to the most famous example of that kind of political celebrity, Nelson Mandela.

But, of course, Mandela deserves the worldwide political devotion he inspires, having been elected to the Presidency in South Africa only after nearly half a century of his own activism and leadership in the struggle against the racist Apartheid regime. His celebrity status is so cemented that many South Africans still call him their President, though his term expired in 1999. Read more about his life at the Official ANC site.

US Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, California, has become something of a political celebrity in the last couple years. She started her public life as a campaign manager for Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to run for US President, in 1972. A longtime staffer for former US Representative Ron Dellums, Barbara Lee has been a Congress member herself since 1998, and achieved instant notoriety around the world on September 15, 2001. On that day, President George W. Bush forwarded a resolution to use any force necessary against anyone associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The resolution passed unanimously in the US Senate, and in the House of Representatives, the vote was 420-1. That lone vote belonged to Barbara Lee. Read a 2001 interview with Representative Lee at Mother Jones online.

But I am a Californian, an American, and I'm just as obsessed with Celebrity as any other. I do Internet Movie Database searches on my favorite stars constantly, whenever they pop into my mind for one reason...or, more often, for no reason at all, and I can't remember for the life of me, say, what movie Kristy McNichol was in with Marsha Mason about a kid and her alcoholic Broadway actress mother (hint, hint...it's here.)

And I should also admit that, as a pop culture-obsessed person who is also a fairly political person, I do get excited when celebrities whose work I admire rally around causes I care about.

Susan Sarandon speaks at an anti-war rally hosted by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) on October 26 of last year.

There is certainly utility in celebrities mobilizing around, well, causes-celebe. There is no doubt that Stella McCartney has won victories for the anti-fur movement, and that Ed Asner has created a stir since the early 1980s over US-backed militarism in El Salvador, the death penalty, and many other issues, and on the right side of the spectrum, Charlton Heston has invigorated the pro-gun lobby.

I guess the problem I keep coming back to is this: in absence of a real choice, the voters of California chose the only viable alternative--the famous guy with muscles who spent a fuck-load of money. And, in order to illustrate just how much life imitates art, here is a quote from the movie The American President with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning (with special thanks to my friend, Julicle, for alerting me to it):

Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas): Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

And that, my friends, is all she wrote.

Peace,

Bree

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