Cause Celeb

WHAT IS IT about celebrities, that they believe they have any value outside of their particular field of entertainment? Of course, like the rest of us they have views and opinions; but unlike the rest of us, their views are given a grandiose platform by the media: it is as if their words merited a significance beyond the fact that such banalities are spoken by some luvvie, sportsperson, pop-star, or Reality TV ‘star’.

            In this country we have had the Redgrave’s supporting all kinds of Left-wing causes (yes, the celebs are invariably Left-wing) from Palestine and Chechnya, to travellers, and Iraq. In America, the belief in public pronouncements by movie stars on the issues of the day is seen as significant by both the media, and those politicians seeking the vote who believe that by associating with a Hollywood celebrity with a cause to promote, he or she will bring said stars’ fan base over to them come an election.

            I remember Jane Fonda (‘Hanoi Jane’ as she was then known) taking herself off to North Vietnam to show her support for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). She was photographed, and filmed by the regime and generally used as a useful idiot, as so many of them are. She delivered up the kind of anti-America propaganda which Uncle Ho could not have bought with all the gold in Fort Knox at the time –  in the end America may have lost the war but they won the peace.

            Another blast from the past was John and Yoko and their preposterous and embarrassing lie-in for peace which inspired, no doubt, such prosaic lyrics as those found in Give Peace a Chance, and that enduring tub of treacle, Imagine. Which, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s description of the Death of Little Nell; one would have had to have had a heart of stone not to laugh.

            The celebrity causes have become part of the performance; they are, if you like, a career appendage dating back to the McCarthy witch-hunt’s in 1950s America. At least those stars who spoke out then were doing so because they, at any moment, could be picked off; and, at  the very least have their careers’  ruined. It was one celebrity cause that really mattered to those celebrities caught up in it.

            I, like the late Senator for Wisconsin, could be accused of witch hunting, if I compiled a list of those celebrities from the world of entertainment who have involved themselves with different liberal causes today. However, I believe that such a list is already commonly known to their fan base via the media.

            Invariably driven either by ego or emotion, and betrayed by their ignorance of whatever cause they find themselves promoting; the celebrities believe themselves (because of what they see as their unusual, and invariably, God given gift), to be special people. In America at least, they believe themselves above the common herd who flank them on the red carpet at the various premiers they attend. Such treatment leads them to believe that their every utterance is as significant to humanity as the Sermon on the Mount.

           

BUT IT IS one particular celebrity’s verbal spillage I wish to comment upon. Sean Penn has added his tuppence worth to the controversy over the British Falkland Islands on the approaching 30^th anniversary of our retaking of the Islands after Argentina’s illegal occupation. He has given his support to Argentina describing this country’s attitude as being ‘ludicrous and archaic’, and insisted on referring to the Falklands as the ‘Malvinas islands of Argentina’.

            Described (according to today’s Daily Mail) by the Argentinean foreign ministry as arriving ‘in the uniform of a conquistador’, it was Mr Penn who, in 2002, took out a £40,000 advert in the Washington Post to lay into George Bush, for what he called his ‘deconstruction of civil liberties’ – so, like the others mentioned above, we know from which part of the political seabed Mr Penn feeds.

            It says something about the man’s personality, does it not, that he is prepared to spend £40,000 in the Washington Post to offer up to us, the great unwashed, his precious judgment on a US president? Yet Mr Penn thought he had something of such profundity to say that he was prepared to spend £40,000 in bringing it to America’s attention. What kind of ego would do such a thing?

            Now, under the flattery of both Presidents Chavez and Cristina Kirchner, Mr Penn has declared himself the champion of Argentina’s ownership of what  he calls the ‘Malvinas’.

            Before this latest eruption to British-Argentinean verbosity, Mr Penn, in all probability, was ignorant of the South Atlantic and the Falkland Islands’ position within it. He smelled a cause to fight for and suddenly became an expert on the ownership of the Falklands.

            These islands were in British hands before Argentina became a nation. But even if this were not the case, our citizens living on the Falklands today have been doing so for well over 100 years, and wish to remain part of the United Kingdom: so what would our Hollywood savant have to say to the people of these isles?

            Mr Penn, Ambassador at Large for Haiti and friend of Fidel Castro, should button up, and remember that those who we today refer to as Americans were once interlopers themselves, responsible for the genocide of native Americans… but he would probably get around this by blaming those hard hearted and fascistic Republicans.