Celebrities are often some of the most visible people in our politics, but they aren’t always particularly constructive.
The big political news out of Sunday’s Oscars had to be Patricia Arquette’s decision to use her time in the sun to advocate for the ongoing struggle again sexism in general and the huge wage gap between what men and women earn by saying:
To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.
This was generally well received, and makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately she decided to elaborate in her backstage comments by saying:
The truth is: even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are applied that really do affect women…And it’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.
These comments were not so well received, indeed they made some people furious. Which in turn created one of those of all-encompassing liberal/left wing internet brawls that have become pretty common recently.
Feel free to make up your own mind as to who is right and wrong, but I have to ask, how helpful is it when celebrities start getting involved in politics anyway?
Don’t get me wrong, celebrities can be very effective at publicizing important issues like climate change or the wage gap. But for every success, like Emma Watson’s nice speech to the United Nations, we have one of these moments where what could be a great moment in an important and neglected national conversations ends up just being a lot of discussion about, well celebrities.
Which is too bad because I thought Arquette’s initial remarks made some important points.
I’ll just say this: politics is hard work and it takes a lot of practice to develop the skills necessarily to do it effectively. If celebrities want to participate in politics that’s great, but they still need but in the time to be able to do things like craft effective political rhetoric. If you don’t do the work, you can end up doing things like alienating the people you are trying to get to help you, which doesn’t really help anyone help anyone.
Hopefully Kanye West and everyone else will take this to heart in the future.
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