The Sad Reality of Celebrity Endorsements

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Bill Maher is happy. He shouldn’t be.

For a hot minute last week, the supposed big news was that Taylor Swift had endorsed Kamala Harris for president. The second assassination attempt against former President Trump briefly drowned out that noise. It’s been a couple of days, and the mainstream media has almost completely memory-holed the assassination attempt, so we can return to really important subjects like celebrity endorsements.

Swift announced her endorsement after the presidential debate when she posted that Kamala is a “gifted leader.” She stated, “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice.”

I’d be very curious to know what “research” Swift has done. To the extent she’s done any at all, it undoubtedly doesn’t extend beyond a Google search of Kamala’s platform or whatever side of a flip-flop Kamala happened to land on that particular day. As to her description of Kamala as “gifted,” she has to be the first person in history to use that word in conjunction with the vacuous vice president. Nobody, not even the most radical leftist, believes that Kamala is anything resembling gifted.

As suspenseful as the media pretended it was, Swift’s endorsement wasn’t surprising. She voted for Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020. But Maher tells us that this is a huge deal. He claims that Swift has such influence in our culture that her endorsement could “literally swing the election.” Maher went on to add that she “saved democracy” by publicly supporting Kamala.

Maher claimed that we should not easily dismiss celebrity endorsements. He argued that it was George Clooney’s public call for Biden to step down that persuaded the latter to voluntarily do so. I disagree. Clooney’s brilliant acting in “Team America: World Police” notwithstanding, it wasn’t his soaring gifts of persuasion that got Biden to abdicate. Biden stepped down because the Pelosi-Obama junta forced him to. We will probably never know the details of the behind-the-scenes threats they used, nor were they the interest of any of the vaunted “research” Taylor Swift did while she was “saving democracy.”

It’s the flashy, glittery name that Maher is happy to have on board, not the sputtering brain power behind it. I doubt he would want Swift on a debate stage defending his positions. But regarding the outsized influence of her endorsement, he let the cat out of the bag when he admitted that “I don’t know what that says about this country.”

Yes, you do, Bill. You know exactly what this says about this country.

It says that millions of low-information voters who march like lemmings to the tune of whatever scantily clad Pied Piper happens to be presently holding their limited attention spans are determining our future. It says that mesmerizing stage shows, strobe lights, and silly outfits are more influential to entire generations of Americans than any working knowledge of the economy, immigration, or international relations. It says that legions of pampered Swifties who think that hurt feelings equal hate crimes increasingly threaten our freedom of speech, which Maher rightfully holds dear.

Do you, Bill Maher, think this sort of influence is a good thing for the future of our country, even if it helps you in this particular election? More than 300,000 people clicked the voter registration link that Swift posted alongside her endorsement. Maher thinks of this as 300,000 Kamala voters. He could be right, but this fact is incidental. What it reveals more consequentially is that 300,000 people need an arrogant harlequin who, by her own lyrical admissions, is uniquely unqualified to choose a good boyfriend, much less a president, to tell them how to vote.

Maybe Swift’s endorsement will secure a Kamala victory; maybe it won’t. But Maher is one of the few old-school liberals who, I concede, still can see the “big picture” — when he wants to, that is. And the big picture here is that no celebrity or group of celebrities should hold this much influence over any election anywhere. It’s bad for Republicans. It’s bad for Democrats. It’s bad for the country.

Taylor Swift isn’t saving democracy; she’s actively eroding it.