Why won’t young US celebrities speak out against Trump?

OK, there were a few. Poet Rupi Kaur (33) and singer Maggie Rogers (31) turned out. But with respect, neither is a Fonda or Baez.

It all leads to the conclusion: Ricky Gervais has won. Oh, you’ve seen the clip. The one where he scolds Hollywood to accept their Golden Globes; thank their agents and their Gods and then get off the stage. No bloody political statements. You’re all just performers. 

And everyone yukked. It’s funny because it’s true. Celebrities, stay in your lane (apart from if you are Ricky Gervais and Dave Chapelle. And Donald Trump). Be less Sacheen Littlefeather; more Chris Pratt. Don’t go woke, lest you go broke.

You might say: “Oh, but that was what it was like in the ‘60s! Everyone was taken up with the spirit of the thing! Everyone was protesting in a way they don’t do now!” 

To which I’d say the ‘60s were populated by people born in the 20s and 30s, not many of whom ended up going to San Francisco.

There was plenty of pushback against stopping the war and letting your freak flag fly. When radical producer Bert Schneider (producer of The Monkees on TV, plus Easy Rider and Days of Heaven) accepted his Oscar for the documentary Hearts and Minds by reading a letter from the North Vietnamese peace envoy, there was a punch-up backstage led (inevitably) by Frank Sinatra. 

Fonda was tarred forever with the nickname Hanoi Jane for her peace activism; John Lennon got death threats because of an off-the-cuff remark about Jesus and Muhammad Ali had his boxing license revoked when he refused to participate in the draft, arguing: “No Viet Cong ever called me (the n-word).” 

Remember the My Lai massacre when American troops were ordered to murder civilians, including babies in Vietnam? After captain William Calley was tried, found guilty and given a life sentence, a poll showed 79% of the American public believed the verdict to be wrong and 81% believed the sentence too harsh. None of those people will have agreed with Hanoi Jane, yet she still spoke up.

Even the way we think about the 1960s was written into our imaginations by the winners: the right. The counter-revolution beat the revolution. The young fought the old and the old won. The ending of Easy Rider was a bummer. And in the years that followed, Nixon and then Reagan led the geriarchy to the sunny uplands of Trump. 

Suggested Reading

Trump is all your fault

Gregory Maniatis

Nowadays, the old grizzled fighters of the ‘60s are dead, have gone to the right – like Jon Voight whose first film role was in the revolutionary The Revolutionary – or are still fighting like Fonda and Baez. But where are the new pop radicals? The Beatles refused to play segregated venues in the US deep south. Today, their counterparts barely make a murmur about Ticketmaster rinsing their fans for thousands of dollars. 

Our singers, actors, writers, songwriters and artists should absolutely be using every platform available to them to talk about issues. Why don’t they?

Watching the clip of Taylor Swift tearfully arguing with her team about why she felt the need to endorse Joe Biden in 2020, having not endorsed Hillary Clinton in the previous election, is to witness celebrity trembling at the brink of backlash and boycotts. 

And there are risks. And women pay disproportionately. When Scream actress Melissa Barrera issued pro-Palestine statements, likening Gaza to a concentration camp, her production company fired her, accusing her of promoting “genocide” against Israel. The new Snow White caused a boycott meltdown because it starred Rachel Zegler- who tweeted “Free Palestine” – alongside Israel’s cultural ambassador and former IDF conscript Gal Gadot. 

But how many times has Martin Sheen been arrested? Answer: Over 70 times. All for civil disobedience and activism.   

Celebrities today hunker in their safe space of irrelevance. It’s something we all do. Every issue is greeted as “a can of worms,” as if once upon a time, everything was easy and ethical stances were overwhelmingly popular. 

Trans rights? Let’s not go there. Israel in Gaza, and its regime which now has enshrined in law that your ethnicity determines your legal rights and whether or not you face the death penalty? Not for discussion over dinner. 

Javier Bardem says “Free Palestine” at the Oscars, and we silently cheer while also thinking, “There goes his career.” For every Mark Ruffalo speaking up, there’s everybody else in the Avengers keeping shtum. Celebrities wear pins that need explaining. Even the mildest utterance is a “rant.”

When I think back to growing up with Thatcher and under the shadow of Reagan, I also remember the punk, the confrontational art, TV like Threads and The Boys from the Black Stuff, the scathing comedians, a time when pop produced Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes and we boycotted an apartheid regime to death. That feels long gone. 

We don’t need Kings. But we could do with some jesters, talking truth to power instead of just entertaining us along the way. 

John Bleasdale’s new novel Connery, about the life of Sean Connery, is published by Plumeria