Should celebrities set the global agenda?
They play an increasing role in world affairs, but for some it may be too much of a stretch.
It sometimes seems as though celebrities today are obsessed with trying to move the global agenda. Like Angelina Jolie. Think of how she's changed her image since her breakup with Billy Bob Thornton. In February, she published an Op-Ed article in the Washington Post about the crisis in Darfur. She's worked as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She was interviewed by Foreign Policy magazine last summer and received a glowing profile in Newsweek, modestly titled "Angelina Jolie Wants to Save the World." In that story, former Secretary of State Colin Powell describes Jolie as "absolutely serious, absolutely informed. ... She studies the issues."
Jolie is just one of many star activists. Madonna, Bono, Sean Penn, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney and Sheryl Crow -- all have used their celebrity status to push their favored causes in an effort to affect what governments do and say. But why do they do it, and will it work?
Celebrity activists: A photo in the Dec. 30 Opinion section was incorrectly identified as an image of Bono, the lead singer for the rock band U2. It was a photo of a Bono impersonator named Pavel Sfera but was incorrectly captioned by the photo agency that transmitted the image.
But today, the power of soft news has given stars new leverage. Their rising clout has as much to do with how we consume information as it does with the celebrities themselves. Cable television, talk radio and weblogs have radically diversified the news sources available to Americans. The more competitive marketplace for news and entertainment affects how public opinion on foreign policy is formed.
Matthew Baum argued in his book "Soft News Goes to War" that a large share of Americans get their information about world politics from such soft-news shows as "Entertainment Tonight," "Access Hollywood," "The View," "The Daily Show" and "The Tonight Show" -- or from Gawker, TMZ and PerezHilton. These shows and websites reach an audience that is normally unattainable by the New York Times or "Nightline," according to Baum. Yet hard-news sources cover celebrity politics too. Think of how many times you saw Madonna in Africa on CNN, or Sean Penn in Venezuela. And frankly, if the Washington Post has to choose between an Op-Ed article by Jolie and one by a lesser-known expert on Sudan, which author do you think will be published?
