Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Guitar

Every time there’s an election in this country, it happens—celebrities come out and endorse this candidate or that, and the rest of us down here in the Valley of the Ordinary are left to debate whether or not an endorsement from one of the rich and famous should really matter in politics.

Debate is probably an overstatement, actually. More like a bunch of people get on the Internet and screech at each other:

Person #1: I don’t give a *$!@% what [insert celebrity name here] thinks. Do the candidates really think I’m so stupid that a celebrity endorsement will make me vote for someone? These people need to shut up and play their guitars and make their movies and stop voicing their stupid opinions.

Person #2: But celebrities have opinions, too, and wouldn’t we rather they throw their fame behind candidates and causes instead of buying more sports cars and toy dogs? Isn’t a celebrity endorsement worth it if it gets one more person involved in the political process and encourages someone to choose a candidate?

Person #1: No. You’re a douche.

Person #2: Shut up. You’re a douche.

And so on and so on.

This issue is on my mind because one of my musical obsessions, Dave Matthews, has come out in support of Barack Obama, posting a thoughtful endorsement of the candidate on his band’s official website, giving interviews about his support of Obama, and—along with longtime collaborator Tim Reynolds—playing a free show at Indiana University to raise awareness of Obama’s campaign last Sunday night (April 6). And I’ll just admit right now that if Dave Matthews stood on stage in front of me and sang the dictionary from A to Z in falsetto, that would be just fine by me, so I’m a little biased. And I’ll also admit that I’m an Obama supporter, but I’d already made up my mind before The Dave came out with his endorsement. Like Obama Girl, I pretty much made up my mind about Obama after watching his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which I then watched a second time when it was rerun on C-Span.

Let me just repeat that. I watched a rerun of a political speech. On C-Span. And I’m often of the mind that my satellite provider should be paying me to have C-Span, not the other way around.

So I was intrigued to say the least. And then I started learning more about him and his positions, and I was sold. So when Dave Matthews came out as an Obama supporter, the effect of the endorsement was that I was really proud to be a fan of Dave Matthews and the Dave Matthews Band because his political positions are in line with mine.

But Person #1 and Person #2 above aren’t arguing about the effect of celebrity endorsements on someone like me. What they’re arguing about is the effect of a celebrity endorsement on someone who is on the fence or hasn’t made up his/her mind yet. And I’ve seen plenty of arguments on the Internet over the past few days in relationship to the Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds show along the lines of the fictional one above (albeit with no capital letters and worse spelling). These arguments inevitably devolve into ad hominem attacks against the candidates (all of them) and against Dave Matthews himself (My personal favorite: the person on some website laughing at the Obama campaign trying to get publicity from a Dave Matthews concert because it’s not 1994 and nobody cares about Dave Matthews and his band anymore. Right. Which explains why they’re one of rock’s top-grossing touring acts–with some of the lowest ticket prices, and you can search Billboard year-end stats for proof–every year. Because nobody cares anymore).

In some ways, both #1 and #2 are right. You shouldn’t give a *$!@%, to some extent, what Dave Matthews thinks (and part of me can’t believe I just wrote that) any more than you should give a *$!@% what anyone thinks. You should make up your mind about things based upon the best available information. But in an age of 24-hour news and the Internet (complete with bloggers like me trying to fill your mind with who knows what), there’s so much information that the best available information is pretty damn hard to discern. And while you shouldn’t automatically default to the position of “I like Dave Matthews, so I’ll have what he’s having,” if the power of a celebrity endorsement makes you curious enough to find out more information about a candidate or a cause while you’re on your way to making up your mind, then I think that’s just great.

Because here’s the thing: as much as some of them come off that way sometimes, celebrities aren’t just dancing monkeys (or Proudest Monkeys or Dancing Nancies, for that matter) here to do the public’s bidding. The rich and famous have to live in this country, too. They get to vote right along with the rest of us and live with the consequences, and as such, they should get to have their say. And for better or worse, their say ends up being a little bit louder that the rest of ours simply because of who they are. But what they have to say certainly isn’t any more or less important. And just as we can choose not to go to their movies or buy their music, we can choose to ignore celebrity opinions just as firmly as they have the right to express them.