Estrich and Sajak on Celebrities
Nov 28, 2007 Political
Pat Sajak and Susan Estrich have each written items about celebrity endorsements and they have both taken slightly different paths with regard to their views. Sajak, a conservative, stated that people do not need celebrities telling them who they should vote for . He discussed Oprah and her endorsement of Obama and the Streisand counter endorsement of Clinton. Sajak basically said that celebrities are the least qualified people to tell us how to vote:
If any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it’s those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood. It’s one thing to buy an ab machine because Chuck Norris recommends it (he’s in good shape, isn’t he?) or a grill because George Foreman’s name is on it (he’s a great guy, so it must be a great grill!), but the idea of choosing the Leader of the Free World based on the advice of someone who lives in the cloistered world of stardom seems a bit loony to me.
~snip~
I suppose anything that gets people engaged in the political process is a good thing, but the idea that a gold record, a top-ten TV show or an Oscar translates into some sort of political wisdom doesn’t make much sense to me. Trust me, one’s view of the world isn’t any clearer from the back seat of a limo. Pat Sajak [Human Events]
Now, some idiot at the Huffington Post addressed Sajak’s piece by saying that Sajak wrote all this but he has endorsed Fred Thompson by donating $2300 to him. I understand that it is difficult for the people at Huffington to keep things straight between bong hits but I think Sajak was talking about public endorsements. His donation to a political campaign was not him going around the country campaigning for a candidate. He donated money. If this constitutes and endorsement then Babs Streisand has endorsed both Clinton and Obama because she gave them BOTH money (as have many Hollywood libs). Sajak’s point, one that was missed by the HuffPo bong passers, was that public endorsements do little good in swaying the vote. Interestingly, the HuffPo idiot in question did not take Estrich to task for her piece.
Estrich, a liberal, wrote that Oprah is great at recommending soap and books but when it comes to candidates her support will not make much difference for Obama. Estrich said that endorsements from celebrities were not what swayed voters because people are not sheep (where has she been):
No one doubts that Oprah is remarkable. But presidents are not soap. Trusting a beloved celebrity to recommend what you wash with is different than trusting them to tell you who should run the country. In my experience, what celebrities bring is crowds and attention. They don’t bring votes. In fact, almost no one does. Susan Estrich [creators.com]
I believe that Estrich is correct in her assessment but she made that assessment with a bias toward Hillary. She did not mention Streisand or indicate that Babs would not bring in votes for the Hildabeast. She only mentioned Obama because Estrich supports Hillary and wants her to win. It is even more interesting that while the Huffington Post was mocking Pat Sajak they ignored the piece by Estrich, who said something very similar to Sajak. If they wanted to ridicule someone for saying that celebrity endorsements did not matter by pointing out an endorsement it seems to me they would have been better off using Estrich than Sajak because while Sajak donated money as a private citizen, Estrich wrote a book about why Hillary should be president. The entire purpose of the book is to persuade people on why Hillary Clinton should be elected president in 2008.
One other thing that Estrich failed to mention while she was saying that celebrity endorsements do not matter (at least for Obama) is that Bill Clinton is a celebrity and he has endorsed Hillary. They trot him out all over the place because he has star status among Democrats and they use his celebrity to pack the folks in. I seemed to have missed the part in Susan’s piece where she said that Bill was good at selling sex but that people would not trust him on who to vote for. I guess she was afraid of what people might think if she used the phrase “good at packing them in” with regard to him.
Sajak wrote a piece indicating that celebrity endorsements are not some wonderful thing because celebrities have no better view of the world than anyone else (I would argue that they have a worse view because they do not know how we actually live). Estrich wrote her piece indicating that celebrity endorsements for Obama were no good and ignored those for her chosen candidate, Queen Hillary. The HuffPo showed its bias by taking Sajak to task for the piece by pointing out his personal donation to a candidate and ignored Estrich altogether even though she has done more than just give money to a candidate. She wrote a book to convince people to vote for the Hildabeast.
To be clear, I would not listen to any of them. I have seen how they lie their very public lives and I would not trust their judgment with regard to anything. How can they tell me how to do things when they keep screwing up how they do things for themselves?
Tags: bong hits, celebrity endorsements, cloistered world, Democrats, fred thompson, Hillary Clinton, huffington post, Obama, pat sajak, political wisdom, President, public endorsements, susan estrich