Vox

Musings, rants, rambling, general nonsense

Politics & The Hollywood Bubble

Posted on | September 8, 2012 | No Comments

I’m not trying to pick on Ashton Kutcher over an old misstep, but it perfectly illustrates my point.

As a reminder, back in early November 2011, Joe Paterno was fired from his position at Penn State following public outrage at his actions (or lack thereof) in the Sandusky child molestation scandal.

In reaction to that event, Kutcher tweeted:

@aplusk: How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.

He was immediately hit with a firestorm of disgust, as one would expect. He then tweeted:

@aplusk: Had no idea, thought it was a football thing. Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet! Didn’t have full story.

 

Which is exactly my point.

Ashton KutcherKutcher says he is a football fan; enough of a fan to care whether Paterno was fired, enough of a fan to use the Jo Pa nickname. Yet, he “had no idea” about a scandal that was publicly engulfing college football for at least a week.

Top that off with the fact that Kutcher and his (then) wife, Demi Moore, started and run (ran?) a foundation dedicated to protecting & rescuing children from sexual exploitation. For a man that claims specific concern over such crimes to not know about a major case unfolding here in the United States is a bit mind boggling.

Unless you consider that the man is an actor, fully insulated in the Hollywood bubble.

Upon learning how colossally he had stepped in it, Kutcher took a step back from Twitter. One would hope that the lesson he would take away would be, “I really need to make sure I am better informed about what is happening in the world”. Instead, he decided what he needed to do was turn over the management of his Twitter account to someone else. { sigh }

I wrote a bit about the phenomenon during the ’08 elections when Matt Damon went on his Sarah Palin rant. He was sure that since he knew nothing about Palin, nobody knew anything about her. Despite the fact that the most minute details of her life were being dissected by virtually every arm of the MSM, he was sure there was no way he would know anything about her in the 8 weeks leading up to the election. The information he quoted as “scary” was misinformation that had been debunked long before he blew his stack about it on camera. Apparently, though the Left was savaging Palin for not being able to name what newspapers she reads, Hollywood types can’t be bothered to actually pick up any paper to read it. Not to mention the wealth of information at your fingertips online.

People that live in the Hollywood bubble don’t know what they don’t know – but they are very sure their level of understanding is greater than the average citizen. Insulated as they are in a Leftie echo chamber, they never need to be bothered with new information or differing opinions – everything they care to know they can learn at cocktail parties & Pilates classes with their like-minded friends. Were they confronted with other viewpoints on a regular basis, they might develop better arguments, rather than relying on accusing their opponents of being Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist, and/or Bigoted. (SIX HIRB, as Dennis Prager says)

Every time a celebrity opens their mouth with an opinion on current events, their words are heard by an untold number of citizens and amplified by their perceived standing in the community. When those celebrities are so uninformed about those current events, and their words are given weight they don’t deserve, they are contributing to an increasingly uninformed/misinformed citizenry. Which means an electorate that is infected with “facts” that are anything but.

And they wonder why we say, “Shut up & sing” (or act)

UPDATE: Regarding the insular world of those on the Left, from I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug, and Terminally Self-Righteous by Harry Stein

 

And one of the things that never ceases to astound is the depth of their ignorance; how, relying as they do on their own ideologically driven media and tending to hang out almost exclusively with those who do the same, they simply have never been exposed to all manner of information vital to seeing the world as it really is.

It’s like what I said, only prettier 🙂



✏

Category: celebrities, Media, politics, Sarah Palin

Comments

Leave a Reply





Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.