Q: Why don't celebrities just "do their thing" and stay out of politics?
Patsy Long, Crofton
A: Four months after that contentious, bitey-snappy-screamy-bloggy presidential election of ours, there's a sense in the air that celebrities may once again make off-the-cuff political remarks without necessarily getting Dixie Chicked -- although it's still nowhere near as freewheeling as it used to be in the soapboxy Hollywood of yore. So they sneak it in, usually on late-late talk shows or, fleetingly, on the red carpet: "I'm wearing Badgley Mischka -- and the war is still wrong, gotta go!" Question-writer Long says one of her friends swore to never again watch a Susan Sarandon movie (or buy the anti-wrinkle makeup she's currently endorsing, I assume) and wonders why stars even bother.
Anyone who's ever attended a black-tie Washington dinner has wondered the same thing, nodding politely as the horror comes into focus: My God, I'm finally talking to Warren Beatty and he's . . . talking . . . about . . . Social Security reform. But the sum total of politically mouthy celebs is nothing compared with the great majority who never say anything about anything important, even when asked. Especially when asked. They wriggle out of almost any issue-related question -- how many more times have you seen celebrities wag a finger and playfully scold their interlocutors, "You're trying to get me in trouble, man."
Which, in the long run, strikes me as sad. We're not trying to get them in trouble; we're checking to see if there's a brain inside all that glamorous goo. Loath though we may be to hear some celebrity's rehearsed opinion or cause, I stand ready with a notebook to hear one fly off the handle, in an impromptu fashion, about the news. Deep down, most celebrities would love to be seen as human; better still are those rare glimpses of them as everyday loudmouth Americans.
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