Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever wrote an interesting post-election piece on Sunday on how the dramatic tilt among celebrities did not drag Hillary over the finish line first. “After the election, of course, it’s easy to see that Hollywood was breathing in its own fumes of hubris.” Stuever wrote:
What this election suggests is that celebrities — those with the most cachet, from Queen Bey all the way down to the snarky-cool comedians who make endless rounds on talk shows where the hosts are friends of friends — are fun to have around but cannot be relied upon to deliver votes. Their presence, in fact, is cited as a deterrent by those on the right. Their emphatically liberal politics, coated in the rainbow-colored candy shell of diversity, send out only one truly clear signal, and it’s precisely the thing that gets under the skin of all those ‘mysterious’ voters who rose up and took this election’s data experts by surprise.
Stuever noted that elites love TV shows and movies that most Americans ignore, and the media elites ignore much more popular programs. While TV critics rush to gush over Donald Glover’s rap-music dramedy Atlanta on FX, they ignore Kevin James’s new CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait, which gets four times the viewer ratings.
The media missed the boat on voters whose middlebrow tastes they either ignore or insult: “A raft of celebs at a rally is now just one more example of how the movie, music, fashion and TV industries keep force-feeding an “elitism” to lesser Americans.You can only turn your nose up so much at country music, mixed martial arts and Jeff Dunham puppet shows before your audience gets sick of hearing how Hamilton and [Beyonce's] Lemonade are going to permanently alter the culture.”
While his Broadway show’s tickets can go for thousands of dollars on StubHub, Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda implied Trump was a “piece of [excrement]” in a rap on Saturday Night Live. The satirical Onion website underlined how this played with the fake headline “DNC Aiming To Reconnect With Working-Class Americans With New ‘Hamilton’-Inspired Lena Dunham Web Series.”
Speaking of Dunham, Trump’s victory also underlines the many empty threats to leave the country during a Trump administration, a list that includes Dunham, Cher, Miley Cyrus, Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, Barbara Streisand, Ne-Yo, Samuel L. Jackson and Bryan Cranston.
Schumer tried to back out by saying it was just a joke. “Anyone saying pack your bags is just as disgusting as anyone who voted for this racist homophobic openly disrespectful woman abuser.” Then she really came unglued: “People who voted for him you are weak. You are not just misinformed. You didn't even attempt information.” What was in the Hillary e-mails? “Well I'll tell you if you were able to read this far through the holes in your sheet. They said nothing incriminating. Nothing.”
Stuever concluded: “What is gone — along with polling science, punditry and the general idea that anyone can get an accurate read on the whole of this hurt nation — is the idea that one must be surrounded by celebrities to become the most important American alive. The only fame a president truly ever needs is his (or her) own.”
