My interest in this thread is less about celebrity endorsements of specific candidates. That's their prerogative.
I have been following this year's Rock the Vote campaign, and I've been really shocked at the sheer number of celebrities who have signed on in support of this initiative. The whole idea is that it's a non-partisan call to young people to cast a ballot, which I think is great, but I'm sort of torn on the issue.
Should young people vote? Of course, everyone eligible should. But it kind of bugs me on some level that people need celebrities to tell them to do something as democratically fundamental as voting. I mean, is that what we've come to as a culture, that we'll only vote because Christina Aguilera or the guy from the Flobots says so?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this issue. Good idea? Bad idea? How much say should celebrities really have? Hit me back.
I don't know... what does it say about our society that I only shop at Macy's because I can't get the jingle from their last commercial out of my head? Advertising is a strange thing. It's not really rational. It's true that celebrities' say is worth no more than anyone else's. They tend to come from a particular subset of people that aren't representative of the whole. But that's the nature of our culture. Frivolous and commercial, and therefore not very serious-minded. I applaud Aguilera and that guy from Flobots for being aware of the world of government and nation. But they are basically products of a nihilistic commercialism. I blame the advertising boom of the 1920's.
The only alternatives to this are on the fringe, although one of them, the religious right vision of America, is in the mainstream in some areas, because their religion has given them the institutional wherewithal to withstand 'capitalism'. If that one wasn't so authoritarian and hierarchical it'd be a good deal more attractive.
