Celebritocracy: The Misguided Agenda of Celebrity Politics in a Postmodern Democracy

Cooper Lawrence PhD

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

Celebritocracy:

The Misguided Agenda of Celebrity Politics in a Postmodern Democracy

© 2020 by Cooper Lawrence PhD

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-604-9

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-605-6

Cover art by Tricia Principe, principedesign.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: When the Best of Intentions Go Horribly Wrong

Live Aid: The Disaster Relief That Was Itself a Disaster

Chapter 2: How Celebrities Made a Natural Disaster Worse

Money Pitt

When Oprah Met Katrina

You Get a House!

I’ll Be There for You

Chapter 3: The Rise of Conservatism and the Fall of Empathy

Liberal Politics Is Built on Empathy, Conservative Politics Is Built on Logic

Conservatives in Hollywood: Who Are They?

Some That Will Surprise You

Conservatives Hiding in Plain Sight

Chapter 4: When Celebrities Fail, Do Their Causes and Products Follow?

Lance Armstrong

Bill Cosby8

Britney Spears1

Chapter 5: Why We Treat Celebrities as Experts

The Celebrity Pseudo-Expert

Tom Cruise and Psychiatry

Katy Perry

Gwyneth Paltrow

So…Why Do We Think Celebrities Are Experts?

Chapter 6: The Loudest Tweets

Paid to Post

Celebrity Tweeters, Who Are You?

Do Celebrities Influence Us on Twitter or Not?

Decision Dominators vs. Logic Annihilators

Chapter 7: The Celebrity Politician

The Celebrity Senators, Governors, Mayors, and Presidents

Why Republican Celebrities Are Better at Getting Votes

A Face for Television

Chapter 8: How Celebrities Are Setting the Global Humanitarian Agenda

How Robin Wright Was Wrong

Did Sting Ever Save the Rainforest?

Why Celebrity Activism Rarely Changes the World

Chapter 9: The Education of Kim Kardashian

Kim’s Multimillion-Dollar Business Is Now Her Advocacy

Kim Kardashian Goes to Washington…Again

Second Chance Hiring and Reentry Event

Kanye West, His MAGA Hat, and Star Wars

Her Ever-Changing Views

The Science of Kim Kardashian

Conclusion

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

In 2009, I wrote a best-selling book called The Cult of Celeb rity: What Our Fascination with the Stars Reveals About Us. I, with my book in tow, spoke on camera prolifically about celebrity culture. I was featured in several documentaries ( American Dynasties: The Kennedys ; Love, Lust, and Lingerie ; An Affair of the Heart ; and three episodes of the A&E show Biography ) and discussed the world of celebrity on both daily and weekly programming ( Entertainment Tonight , HLN’s Showbiz Tonight , Inside Edition , 20/20 , and several Fox News Channel shows). I even starred in my own celebrity-oriented shows ( Confessions of a Teen Idol for VH1 and Dish Nation for 20th Television). Though I was embraced as both a psychologist and an expert in all things celebrity, I had one blind spot: the impact social media would have on how celebrities communicate their political agendas. To be fair, at the time, we all had that blind spot. It was early 2009, and none of us could have predicted the jolt of social media. We could never have foreseen the major impact social media would have on our political tapestry. Not then and maybe not even yet.

According to technology historians, social media as we know it began with Friendster in 2003. Even though Facebook launched in 2004, it would not become available to the public until 2006 and not part of our lexicon until a few years after that. This is why MySpace was the top social network until Twitter launched in 2006. But it was rock musician Tom Petty, in March of 2008, who would be the first celebrity to join Twitter, leading the way with Lady Gaga entering the Twitterverse soon after. They both used the platform as many early celebrity adapters did: as an opportunity to promote their brand, share news, and further bond fans to their brand.

March 26, 2008: @ladygaga op rehearsing for my video just dance and am now at wmc to perform at the Armani and nervous records party. But I am no nervous record!

Those were the first two artists we can identify as celebrities who communicated directly with their audience through social media. However, looking back on some of those early tweets, they seemed more like a PR person’s communiqués than personal messages from the celebrity themselves. That was about to change.

In fact, our forty-fourth president, Barack Obama, who many considered a celebrity of sorts, regularly made news as a young political leader who used YouTube and social media to communicate with his young followers. His first tweet preceded Petty and Gaga, as it was sent on April 29, 2007. He wrote, Thinking we’re only one signature away from ending the war in Iraq.

By the time our next president, Donald Trump, came around, social media as a tool for political information was weaponized. Mr. Trump knew he had to do more, do something unprecedented, or in this case, unpresidential. So, he tweeted and kept tweeting—sometimes up to twenty-two times a day, according to Politico—disseminating his missives to the masses, as it were. Mr. Trump kept us informed on policy, his meetings with advisors and dignitaries, and random thoughts he had about the news and other machinations in the world. But he also vented. He publicly called out and shamed his adversaries using the real and relatable language that got him elected. In fact, Newsweek reported that as of June 17, 2019, the president had used the words loser in 234 tweets, dumb in 222 tweets, and stupid in 183 tweets during some of his more notable Twitter moments.

Somehow by turning presidential politics into a character-driven version of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment Corporation), Trump has turned political tweeting into an art form and a completely unexpected policy platform. Donald Trump, as the ultimate celebrity, had others following suit. Seldom heard from A- and B-listers came out of the woodwork to make their Twitter presence, and thus their political agendas, known through Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

In 2009, celebrities and their political affiliations were so uninteresting that even though I included a chapter about celebrity political influence in The Cult of Celebrity, it was scarcely discussed in over two hundred interviews. In American history, celebrities have impacted our voting behavior, political views, wedge-issue politics, and the passing of bills and, eventually, laws. In a democracy, every voice matters, but celebrity voices seem to be heard louder. This book, Celebritocracy, will explain how celebrity politics morphed into identity politics and how that, unintentionally, has damaged the country.

I have always been fascinated with celebrities and how they affect what we buy, what we value, who our role models are, how we vote, and what we know. In fact, my dissertation for my PhD was titled, The Relationship Between Television Viewing and the Political Knowledge and Behaviors of Emerging Adults (emerging adults being the 2001 term for millennials before the word became ubiquitous in the mid-2000s). I was interested in how shows like The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher or how network news like CNN or Fox News shaped what we believe to be true about politics, thus guiding our political identity and political decision-making. What I found was that audience polarization was at the core of why we watch what we watch and hold the beliefs that we do. Audience polarization is when a channel gives its viewers more of what they already think—rather than challenging them with new ideas—to increase viewership and loyalty. I also learned that satirical news shows, like The Colbert Report, had to give real news information because they might be the only source their young audience consumed for news all day.

But the most interesting finding was that emerging adults who had a strong sense of law and fairness were the most likely to vote, stump for a candidate, and exhibit all kinds of political behaviors. Finally, the most shocking finding (at the time, but not at all surprising now) was that of the 302 millennials I spoke with, the more political news they watched, the less political knowledge they seemed to have. I tested political knowledge with questions like, To override a presidential veto, how much of a majority is required in the Senate and the House? and What position is held by John G. Roberts? I found that the more national news you watched, the less likely you were to know the answers to our political knowledge questions.

And while one could logically assume a negligible variance of behaviors and attitudes in the ensuing ten years, quite the contrary is true. There has been yet another shift.

Celebrity activism and political engagement on its face appear to have all the markings of a corroborative relationship, and in some cases, that’s true. This book will explore where it went right and all the places where it went wrong. Jon Stewart’s advocacy for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, for example, is a rare moment where a public figure used their celebrity selflessly and altruistically. Rare, when you compare his actions to those of other celebrity advocates who acted impulsively yet thoughtlessly, leading to worsening outcomes, like Brad Pitt’s charity, the Make It Right Foundation. The foundation’s mission was to