Now that the dust of the 2024 presidential election is settling, I’d like to take a moment to discuss what I found to be one of its most distasteful aspects — one that, when closely analyzed, suggests that the “democracy” we’re all supposed to be trying to “preserve” has apparently already gone the way of the dodo.
I’m referring to so-called “celebrity endorsements.” We’ve all seen and heard of this phenomenon: this political analyst or that news host gushing about how this or that actor is endorsing this or that presidential nominee (with the majority, of course — certainly the most annoying — coming out for Kamala Harris).
Celebrity endorsements represent three serious problems concerning the state of democracy in America.
The Original Hypocrites
The first should be obvious enough: Why should any American base his or her vote on the endorsement of a mere “celebrity,” whose claim to fame revolves around their acting skills? Put bluntly, who cares what Robert de Niro or any other actor thinks?
Here’s a little known but very relevant “fun fact”: As with many modern English words, our word hypocrite comes from Greek: hypokrites (ὑποκριτής). Care to take a guess what that word — which today means “two-faced deceiver” — meant to the Greeks? According to Liddell and Scott’s authoritative Greek-English Lexicon, a hypokrites is “one who plays a part on the stage; a player, actor.” In other words, the original — and much more appropriate — word for “actor” is hypocrite; to be an actor is to be, quite literally, a hypocrite. Makes sense, no?
Think about it: All actors who are famous are so because, unlike you or me, they excel at pretending to be what they are not. Indeed, they’re so good at their fraud that most of them have become multimillionaires. They are not particularly intelligent or wise, moral or ethical; they do not necessarily know the first thing about politics or economics — and they most certainly cannot find Ukraine on a map.
Yet, because they are so good at getting you to believe they are something that they’re not, and because they are the literal and quintessential definition of the word hypocrite — as when they preach about the environment while polluting the air with their private jets — they now wield enormous influence on politics and elections.
We the Sheeple
The second problem posed by “celebrity endorsements” is that people are actually that stupid. One need not know the all too telling origins of the word hypocrite to instinctively understand that actors are the very last people to whom voters should look for guidance. Yet here we are. What more can be said of the abysmal intelligence level of a person who decides to vote for this or that candidate “because an actor I like told me to”?
The third and most subtle problem is that no one seems to have a problem with any of this — neither the undue influence of actors on politics and elections, nor the vacuity of the sheeple. Rather, they openly and eagerly talk about how best to harness the power of celebrity to continue manipulating the masses.
A couple of weeks before the election, for example, well-known pollster Frank Luntz, breathlessly said on CNN:
So what I’m waiting to see is whether Taylor Swift comes out and does a concert [to endorse Kamala Harris]. I think that is a big deal. She is as popular today as Oprah Winfrey was when she endorsed Barack Obama. And Oprah’s support, active support, made a difference in his race…. Tayler Swift could make a difference in this race.
To summarize: 1) people with zero credentials but who have a talent to deceive wield much undue influence on politics and elections; and that’s because 2) all too many voters are just plain dumb. Meanwhile, 3) no one on either side of the political spectrum seems to have a problem with any of this. It’s just a normal and accepted part of the political landscape to be openly exploited.
This latter point is especially worth reflecting on. We’re always being preached to about the need to “preserve democracy,” but if the three aforementioned points about celebrity endorsements are true (and they are) hasn’t “democracy” already been utterly compromised?
Celebrity endorsements may not have won the election for Kamala Harris, but there is no doubt that they garnered her more votes than she otherwise would have gotten, and could have been decisive — just as they may be decisive in future elections.
At that point, democracy will have given way to mob rule manipulated by the few — an ochlocracy controlled by an oligarchy — which is far, far from what was envisioned by the Founders (who no doubt are forever rolling in their graves).
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.