America, Celebrity Endorsements Do Not Work. Future Politicians Take Heed.

The period running up to the referendum that gave us Brits ‘Brexit’ saw many celebs appear across our TV screens and phones, urging and imploring anyone and their followers to vote. Their importuning unsettled me.

Weeks before the ballot’s closing, I was unsure of the source of my anxiety, but I needn’t have been, for the result of the EU referendum soon crystallised what I had long suspected.

I learned a lesson I fear our American cousins hadn’t: that the ultra-wealthy, famous, talented, and beautiful 0.00001 percent’s influence ends within the translucent bubble that hovers above the grounded majority, floating off with the celestial deities.

The problem with deities is that – although they are worshipped – they are seldom obeyed. Many great stories exist because mere humans dared to disobey a god.

Wealth, success and beauty are all toxins off which these Kamala Harris’ endorsers are inebriated—too drunk on their own Champagne to realise that debt, hunger, wars, injustice, death, floods, earthquakes and police brutality are all faces the 99% of the population know far too well and to which the famous are complete strangers. Hardship that ravages homes, destroys lives and wrecks futures.

Granted, some celebs came from nothing, but fame has a tendency to exalt. The famous haven’t seen or encountered tragedy in a while; and distance and ample time create novelty. These celebrities are simply out of touch.

I couldn’t help watching all these endorsements, feeling yet again queasy. Perhaps a reverie, but I swear I saw saliva sling off the moisturised lips of one celeb – it whipped through the air and landed on my face, only to droop mockingly downward, leaving a wet trail of condescension in its wake.

Kamala herself, in moments, seemed smug behind the velvet-rope of endorsements—her appearances on SNL, Oprah, exchanging hugs and kisses with the self-proclaimed ‘Queen’ Bey, and punctuating the crowd’s cheers with her infectious, albeit incongruous, laughter.

I am not surprised by the 2024 US election results. Apparently, the Democrats hadn’t realised that a voter who relies on a celebrity endorsement to vote–or to be influenced–is not only an unqualified voter but one in whose hands the American people have no business placing its democracy.