Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again and today's topic of conversation, 8 reasons why celebrity Endorsements are now Completely meaningless.
[00:00:17] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the Dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
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Alrighty, so eight Reasons why Celebrity Endorsements Are Now Completely Meaningless I was actually planning to talk about this topic a few weeks ago, but then, as the US Election cycle ramped up into its final manic phase, it felt like every other day there was some new celebrity, some who hadn't even deigned the limelight for many, many years, who were all coming out of the woodwork to endorse Kamala Harris in particular. Now, Trump got some celebrity endorsements, but it's fair to say that the Lions share the overwhelming majority of celebrity endorsements. Which is hardly surprising when you think about Hollywood and the celebrity bubble. They live in a progressive bubble and echo chamber. They are part of that world. So it makes sense that if they were going to endorse anyone, they would endorse Kamala Harris. But there was a whole ton of them. And it certainly seemed to be the case that Kamala Harris received the majority of the celebrity endorsements, everyone from Julia Roberts to Mark Ruffalo. And by the way, whenever I see Mark Ruffalo, who's out presenting for another political cause, I always have a sense of tragedy and sadness about the man. He seems like Someone who is desperately searching for God, but he has instead invested his worship and his devotion to all sorts of different political causes. It's like a man desperately searching for meaning. And there's a great sense of tragedy I always feel, whenever Mark Ruffalo is doing his thing. Anyway, moving on. Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Beyonce, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and by the way, Bruce Springsteen's another one for me. That's kind of interesting because I actually really love the music of Bruce Springsteen and some of his opinions on these matters I agree with, others I disagree with. And he's one celebrity I think, out of the bunch who probably has an actual genuine commitment because he has been invested in promoting and endorsing candidates and ideas for many, many years now. This is not something new for him. Whereas some of the others, you feel it's quite vacu, they've just arrived on the scene as Johnny Come lately's and it's more of a public loyalty ritual than it is a genuine commitment of any sort of meaningful depth or contemplation. Oprah Winfrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Eilish, Lady Gaga, or as I like to say, Lady Gaga. George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Stephen King, Leonardo DiCaprio, and we're going to talk about him in a minute. The Avengers, all of the Avengers, well, not all of them, but the core Avengers got together and did a really cringe worthy zoom call endorsing Kamala Harris. But there was one noticeable absent and that was Thor. Chris Hemsworth was missing and I wondered to myself, is this because Chris Hemsworth is an Australian and he didn't feel that he had anything to offer, so there was no point in him being present on that call? Or is it because he actually didn't want to endorse Kamala so he just quietly absented himself from that whole debacle. And of course the huge one very early on was Taylor Swift. Everyone was raving in the Kamala camp and all of the astro turfed and very fake online social media campaigners who were pretending to be organic, ordinary everyday people, they were all crowing about what an important endorsement Taylor Swift was and how this was definitely going to win Kamala the election and how all of the youth voters were going to turn out for her as a result of this. Of course none of that came to pass. Now what we've discovered actually in the last few days is the quite astounding suggestion that at least some of these celebrities were actually paid for their endorsements. They received Money. I believe it was Megan the stallion who was one of the earlier celebrity endorsements, and she did a concert for Kamala Harris. I believe that the indication is that she may have been paid $6 million for that. So this whole thing is starting to look like it might have been a bit of a rort. But regardless of that, whether or not they were paid, these endorsements were completely meaningless. They served no useful function in a political campaign. They did not move the dial in any meaningful way at all. All that really happened was people inside the progressive echo chamber had celebrities who were also there with them inside the echo chamber, just loudly trumpeting the same political views and voting preferences as they had or would have if they were in America and could have voted for Kamala Harris. But it was largely meaningless. There was no one outside of the bubble who was being attracted by this. And this is not a new phenomenon. And there are eight reasons that I can think of why celebrity endorsements are now completely meaningless and why they just don't work. The first of these eight is that celebrities are now plagued by all sorts of persistent scandals, and they are very serious. Some of these things like the Diddy scandal, which is just the latest serious scandal to plague the world of celebrities, but then also things like the Epstein island scandal, which has been going on for many years now. And there's that very popular demand to release the list. Now it's the Diddy list. Previously, it was the Epstein list. All of the elites and celebrities who actually were embroiled in those scandals. Basically the golden age of Hollywood is now over, and actors are once again being seen as they had been formally prior to the golden age of Hollywood, the cinematic age. They were viewed really as members of a social fringe group who were predominantly hedonistic and quite weird in nature. Often they were the people who had the more immoral lifestyles. They were the people who weren't actually part of the mainstream. They were not held up as icons. That's something that really took off during the golden age of Hollywood. And now, quite clearly, it has died away again. They're being viewed more in the former light, the one which they used to be viewed. And I think also a lot of trust was probably lost for celebrities during COVID because basically most members of the public, I think, saw these desperate attempts on the part of many celebrities to actually remain culturally relevant when they couldn't actually produce video or film or TV content. And so celebrities were doing all sorts of very cringy and at times, very forced and awkward things to try and keep themselves in the limelight, but most also, at the same time, just allowed themselves to become mouthpieces for the regime. And often in the most embarrassing kinds of ways. I think of someone like Stephen Colbert and that truly cringy vaccine song and dance routine that he did set to the tune of tequila. It was just embarrassing. So these people who were just turning out for government mandates and other state sponsored activities, they didn't appear to be thinking through their actions in any meaningful way. They were just there to be celebrity mouthpieces for the regime. And it's almost certain that that did untold damage to their credibility. They probably would have been a lot better off if they'd just remained silent through that whole period. Number two reason why celebrity endorsements are now meaningless is because of the patently vacuous nature of these endorsements. We are talking here about people who by and large have absolutely no skin in the game, or they have the ability to insulate themselves against very bad policies. They're not the ones who are wearing the brunt of bad immigration policies. They are not the ones who are bearing the brunt of bad economic policies. They have the money, the wealth. They live in gated communities. They are very, very isolated and insulated. They have a view of the world that is utopian because it is disconnected from what's really going on on the ground. Like, one of the more stark moments of all of this happened earlier on in the campaign when Oprah Winfrey, and by the way, that town hall event that Oprah Winfrey organised, her production company, is it called Harper? I think that's the name of her production company, apparently, that received a million dollars to do that town hall endorsement event, an event that really didn't appear to be worth a million dollars. But at that particular event, Oprah Winfrey took the mic and declared that she had been the victim of oppression. And this really, really speaks to that disconnect. Here is one of the richest women in America. She has built her own media empire and she takes to the mic to claim that she is aligned with people who are experiencing genuine oppression. It was actually just embarrassing at the end of the day. And people see through the vacuity of all of that. Which brings me to reason number three, why celebrity endorsements are now completely meaningless. The absurd cognitive dissonance of celebrities who are regularly in the media now confessing all sorts of dysfunctional pathologies, and then next minute they're endorsing a candidate and suggesting that they are wise and virtuous role models when it comes to how to make good life choices. If that was the case, we wouldn't be constantly hearing a slew of confessions and photographs and images and stories and articles about all of the pathologies and the oddities that they grapple with. It just doesn't work. These two things don't go together. If you're looking for a wise role model, these are not the people that you're going to be looking to, because so much of the dysfunction is now on very public display. Which brings me to reason number four, why celebrity endorsements are now completely meaningless. Hypocrisy. I think of something like in particular, the climate hectoring of celebrities, because this is probably one of the more stark examples of this and a really glaring one. During the last election campaign, the one that's just ended a week ago, was Leonardo DiCaprio, superstar actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been banging the drum of climate hectoring for quite some time now. And he came out and he publicly endorsed Kamala because he said that Trump was such a threat when it came to the climate. And I looked at this and I thought, this is just madness. Here is a celebrity elite who has multiple massive mansions that just chew through power and all sorts of other resources. And he regularly gets on private jets and flies all over the globe. And here he is telling us about what he thinks is wrong with the lack of attention to the climate crisis and who he thinks the chief offenders are. As I said to someone else at the time, hey, kids, look, it's massive, multi mansion and private jet, man. He's come to tell us about how we can respect the climate better. It just does not wash at all. We see through the hypocrisy. Forget about Scientology. We need to start talking about climatology amongst celebrities. The people who have bought into this thing, like a religious cult, it is their religious belief and it's got all sorts of practices. It's got its own eschatology, it's got its own end times, its apocalypse. And these people are people who don't really live what they proclaim. It's no good talking about the threat of rising sea levels, et cetera, et cetera. And then as a celebrity who's saying those things, you go and buy waterfront properties. Those two things don't really make a lot of sense. Which brings me to reason number five, why celebrity endorsements are now meaningless. Most people have had enough of elites telling them how to think and how to act. The celebrity classes can't even consistently fulfill their own primary role in society with excellence. Which is to create quality and enjoyable moments of artistic or storytelling escapism. That's what they're about. Or good music, and they can't even consistently do that well. So why would we think they offer excellence when it comes to voting choices? Surely if these were people who were showing us that they lived lives of excellence, we could maybe take them a bit more serious. But they are basically now the face of a very toxic propaganda machine. And a lot of people, their film and television experiences are being ruined by this toxic propaganda machine that they are the very face of. There's also now decades of cynicism that we have under our belts. Something which really began to manifest from the 1970s onwards. And I think really generation X in particular bore the brunt of a collapsing Western society and these economic realities and other things which didn't deliver as promised. And so a lot of cynicism crept into Western culture. And we now know really how the machine works. The magic of celebrity is gone. We know that they take large sums of money to endorse things. We know that they are being paid to do this, that this is not sincere, it's not genuine. And so when they try and turn on the charm and endorse a political candidate, even if they're not receiving money to do that, we know that the magic is gone. We know that this is not something that has a deep sort of sincerity to all of it. And on top of all of that, social media, I think, has really destroyed the celebrity mythos, because we see so much of them now that we are really tired of their constant presence in our waking lives. Social media has given them the opportunity, the platform, the stage to constantly be on stage and constantly talking and constantly telling us how they think the world should be. And that just destroys the magic. If we didn't hear from them as much, it's quite conceivable that there would be a bit more of a sort of mythic power to their pronouncements. But that's completely gone now because we hear from them all the time. Which brings me to reason number six, why celebrity endorsements are meaningless. We have been living now for many decades under a culture of self gratifying and self creating liberalism. And this has actually formed an entire population of people to basically go their own way. I did it my way as Frank Sinatra used to sing. My body, my choice. Do you really think that you can then instruct an entire culture of people who have been formed at the very core of their being to be my body, my choice? Self creating Self gratifying liberals to actually surrender all of that license and hedonism and then act according to former hierarchical norms that used to exist where you listened and respected people in authority and you didn't put yourself at the centre of the known universe. That is just never going to actually work. It's never going to happen. People are not going to abandon these deeply ingrained religious ways of existing in the world where they view themselves as autonomous, self choosing individuals. They're not going to turn around and suddenly say en masse, oh, okay, now that celebrity X is telling me to actually think and act a certain way, I'll just do that. No, that's not how that works at all. Which brings me to reason number seven, why celebrity endorsements are now meaningless. The only people really likely to actually act according to celebrity endorsements are very young people. And they are also the same demographic that doesn't actually vote. So the most pliable and compliant demographic when it comes to celebrity endorsements is the very same demographic who either can't vote because they're too young or they just won't vote. They don't turn out in large numbers. And also I think what you saw this time was that it didn't really help that a lot of these celebrities are not popular with the youth demographic anyway. Like Taylor Swift, she's got youth clout, but George Clooney, Julia Roberts, some young people quite conceivably just don't even know who these people are. So there's not really much in the way that's speaking to that particular generation. Then of course, the older generations, they're a bit more cynical, they're a bit more jaded. They know how the world really works and they're not listening to gated community wealthy elites to tell them how they should or shouldn't vote. Which brings me to my eighth and final reason why celebrity endorsements are now dead. Celebrity endorsements don't do anything. They don't lower house prices, they don't put food on the table. The crisis is far too deep and feelings just won't cut it anymore. You can't run on a feelings based campaign that does not work. Several decades ago you could get away with that, but not anymore. And a celebrity endorsement is no substitute for meaningful policies. So if you haven't got meaningful policies, it doesn't really matter if you turn up with 150 Hollywood celebrities. Now, what was interesting, what did seem to have clout on the other side on the Trump side of the equation, was the fact that he had people in his camp who weren't just endorsing him, but were there with him on the journey. And they were people who seemed to have either created things like someone like Elon Musk, or they were people who actually had real skin in the game, like Tulsi Gabbard. She'd actually risked, she'd spoken out, she'd crossed the tribal divide and she'd also paid for it. And so I think that had a lot more impact with people. They were looking, I think, for integrity and a sense of realism to what was going on. And celebrities just don't do that for you. A celebrity endorsed, as I said, is not a meaningful policy. And a celebrity is not someone who is a representation of real life in the real world. They are the escapist fantasy. They are the representation of that world. You go to to escape from the real world. And we now know that a lot of them live in escapist fantasy in their gated communities. They're very wealthy, disenfranchised, disconnected life inside the dome. So that's my eight reasons why celebrity endorsements are now meaningless. If you can think of any others, feel free to get in touch and let me know. I'm sure I might have missed one or two. Another thing that we're doing this week on the podcast is Beautiful Music Week. And so every single episode of the podcast this week is concluding with a beautiful piece of music. And today we are going to conclude with Takata in D Minor, one of the most widely recognised organ compositions, possibly one of the most used organ compositions of all time, when it comes to film and television as well. Now, this particular composition, Toccata and D minor, is attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, although there is some scholarly disagreement on this point, with some even taking the stance that its authorship is undecided. So some scholars say they think that in actual fact, there are some clear comparisons and similarities to a completely different composer's work. And others are saying, well, we just don't know, it's uncertain. But generally speaking, it is attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. And you haven't really lived, I don't think, until you've heard this particular piece of music played live in a stone cathedral on a quality pipe organ. And I have had the privilege on more than one occasion in my lifetime to actually hear an organist in a stone cathedral play this beautiful piece of music. And it really is something special. So I hope you really enjoy this concluding moment of today's podcast. Don't forget to crank up your earbuds or your stereo loud wherever you're listening to it and really appreciate the ambiance and the beauty of this wondrous piece of organ music. Thanks again for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatchers Sa.
