Superstar power

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This article was published 13/10/2018 (2835 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pop superstar Taylor Swift has covered a lot of topics in her career — but politics hasn’t been one of them.

That changed on Sunday as Swift triggered a social-media firestorm when she told her 112 million Instagram followers that she was backing and would vote for two Democrats running in her home state of Tennessee in the U.S. congressional midterm elections on Nov. 6.

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift wrote.

Her comments drove a surge in voter registration, with a reported 102,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 registering to vote in the two days after her message.

On Tuesday, after picking up a record fourth artist of the year trophy at the American Music Awards, the 28-year-old pop singer broke her silence again, urging the audience in L.A. and millions watching at home to get out and vote.

“This award and every single award given out tonight is voted on by the people. And you know what else is voted on by the people? The midterm elections of Nov. 6. Get out and vote,” she said when accepting her trophy.

Not surprisingly, conservatives were outraged, with U.S. President Donald Trump chirping: “Let’s say I like Taylor Swift’s music about 25 per cent less now.”

But the singer isn’t the first entertainer to make their partisan opinions known, as we see from today’s historic list of Famous Celebrity Political Endorsements:

5) The celebrity: Rapper Kanye West

The politician: Donald Trump

The endorsement: If there is an anti-Taylor Swift, it has to be quirky rap star Kanye West, who recently announced he is changing his name to simply “Ye.” These two have been butting heads in music’s most notorious on-off feud for years. It all began in September 2009 at the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York when Kanye infamously jumped onstage and interrupted a then-19-year-old Swift, who had just defeated Beyoncé to win best female video. “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” he declared to millions watching. But this year, the feud has turned political, with Swift endorsing Democrats and Kanye transforming into Trump’s most visible and vocal celebrity supporter. The rapper met with Trump for lunch in the White House on Thursday. Trump has lauded Kanye for his continued praise of his presidency, saying: “He’s been a terrific guy, he loves what we’re doing for African-American jobs… Median income… at an all-time high, poverty level at the best rate, meaning the lowest rate. Kanye is a smart guy.” The rapper called Trump his “brother” and said the two are both “dragon energy” in a series of tweets. Kanye stoked the flames during his recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, donning a “Make America Great Again” hat and delivering an impromptu pro-Trump diatribe after his performance. He suggested the show’s producers didn’t want him to wear the MAGA hat onstage. “They bullied me backstage. They said, ‘Don’t go out there with that hat on.’” He noted that white people ask him, “‘How could you like Trump, he’s racist?’ Well, uh, if I was concerned about racism, I would’ve moved out of America a long time ago.” And the beat goes on.

 

4) The celebrity: Oprah Winfrey

The politician: Barack Obama

The endorsement: When it comes to celebrity endorsements, they don’t get much more impressive than the so-called “Queen of All Media,” by which we mean Oprah Winfrey, the legendary media executive, actress, talk show host and philanthropist. Back in 2004, after watching the then-upstart senator from Illinois deliver a stirring keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention, Oprah said she knew instantly that Barack Obama would one day be president of the United States. The media star invited the rising political star to her Legends Ball in 2005, where she told attendees Obama would run to become the country’s 44th president, and she would do everything in her power to make sure he would win. In a later interview with CNN’s Larry King, asked about her groundbreaking endorsement, Oprah said: “He’s worth going out on a limb for… My money isn’t going to make a difference to him. I think that my value to him, my support for him is probably worth more than any cheque that I could write.” As TV viewers have learned, when it comes to endorsements, the Oprah effect is as powerful as gravity. “In the fall of 2006, Obama had just released his book, The Audacity of Hope. After an endorsement by Oprah, the book became a New York Times national bestseller and jumped to No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller list… But not only did Oprah help a little-known Illinois senator become a No. 1 bestselling author, according to research conducted by the University of Maryland, by the time the 2008 Democratic primaries were held, her endorsement bought Obama upwards of a million votes, securing him the spot of presidential nominee,” broadly.vice.com said. That study was reportedly the first to show a correlation between endorsements and electoral outcome. Broadly.vice.com added: “While the result of Oprah’s endorsement is unprecedented, it did confirm what some historians already believed — celebrity endorsements can carry some weight.”

 

3) The celebrity: NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain

The politician: Richard Nixon

The endorsement: It seems odd that a basketball superstar nicknamed “Wilt the Stilt” would become a huge supporter of man who would become vilified as “Tricky Dick,” but it’s true. It was 1968, one of the most turbulent years in American history, the year civil rights legend Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was felled by an assassin’s bullet on the second-floor balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tenn. It was seeing his hero in a casket on April 9, 1968, that turned Wilt Chamberlain, arguably the most dominant player in the history of the National Basketball Association, into a political activist. That was the year the man who once scored 100 points in a single game stumped on behalf of Republican Richard Nixon, who went on to claim the White House. “I’ve never gotten involved in politics before. But you have to get off the fence and declare yourself sometime and this is the time for me,” Chamberlain told sportswriter Pete Axthelm in a long profile published in the Los Angeles Times. “I’ve known Nixon and been impressed by him for 10 years and I decided to join him. It’s intriguing to know that I might have some hand in shaping the future of this country.” Prior to King’s death, Chamberlain rarely spoke publicly about the social, cultural and political turmoil of the day. According to TheUndefeated.com, during the procession after King’s Atlanta funeral, Wilt the Stilt decided it was time to speak up. “I kept asking myself, what can I do to help America — and particularly my people — reach the mountaintop and see the promised land that Dr. King so often talked about?” Chamberlain said in 1968 to the black-owned Los Angeles Sentinel, notes TheUndefeated.com. “Something came over me at that precise moment. As I walked with thousands of others from the Ebenezer Baptist Church to his final resting place, I quietly walked up to former vice-president (Richard) Nixon, and told him I liked his program and wanted to join his team.” In his memoir, the superstar recalled: “Throughout his political career, he’d been called a ‘loser’ — the guy who could never win the big one. Me too.” At 7-1, Wilt was easily Tricky Dick’s biggest backer.

 

2) The celebrities: Frank Sinatra and “the Jack Pack”

The politician: John F. Kennedy

The endorsement: In the 1960s, superstar singer/actor Frank Sinatra and his entertainer pals — Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop — were famously known as “the Rat Pack.” In 1960, Sinatra and his Vegas buddies were temporarily dubbed “the Jack Pack” when they worked in various ways to support U.S. Sen. John F. (Jack) Kennedy’s campaign for president. “Back in the day, John F. Kennedy was practically a card-carrying member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack and some political types believe his relationship with the coolest people in the world at the time aided in his defeat of Vice-President Richard Nixon in the 1960 election,” according to MentalFloss.com. “Kennedy’s good looks and seemingly glamorous lifestyle identified him with the Hollywood elite that had adopted him, rendering him incredibly popular with the people. During the Democratic convention that election year, Hollywood’s support of Kennedy was on brilliant display… and some political pundits reportedly joked that if elected, he would appoint Sinatra as secretary of state.” Kennedy had a connection to the Rat Pack because Lawford was his brother-in-law. According to author Michael Sheridan’s book Sinatra and the Jack Pack, the candidate and the entertainer desperately wanted to hang with each other’s gang. They bonded over their mutual ability to attract beautiful women, male admirers and adoring acolytes. “For hard-drinking, brawling, Mafia-connected womanizer Sinatra, raised on the hardscrabble streets of New Jersey, the friendship offered an entrée to Washington, D.C.’s ultimate circle of power, and a veneer of respectability. Kennedy loved the singer’s Hollywood glamour, and access to the world’s most beautiful women. Sinatra was even put in charge of JFK’s inaugural gala ceremony and parade in Washington, D.C., in January 1961,” Sheridan told Britain’s Daily Express. But Ol’ Blue Eyes’ ties to organized crime were seen as a political time bomb, and in 1962, Kennedy abruptly expelled Sinatra from his inner circle, prompting the singer to wield a sledgehammer and smash renovations to his home done for a planned JFK visit. Sinatra later moved his support to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Regrets? He had a few.

 

1) The celebrity: Al Jolson

The politician: Warren G. Harding

The endorsement: You will find this hard to believe, but there used to be a time when movie stars and singers didn’t bother everyone with their political affiliations. When did the madness begin? Well, before Taylor Swift and Kanye West and Wilt the Stilt and Frank Sinatra, there was Al Jolson, the shamelessly sentimental singer and actor who was heralded as “the World’s Greatest Entertainer” in the 1920s. He is arguably best remembered as the first person ever to speak in a feature film, starring in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer in 1927. In the 1920 election campaign, however, Jolson helped turn a political lightweight named Warren Harding into the first celebrity-endorsed president in U.S. history. According to AtlasObscura.com, in the run-up to the 1920 presidential campaign, Harding was a fifth-year Republican senator branded by the New York Times as “a very respectable Ohio politician of the second class.” Today, Harding is consistently rated as one of the most forgettable presidents in U.S. history. But he hit on the genius plan of having Jolson and his celebrity pals bring the world to his front door in Marion, Ohio. “Offstage, (Jolson) happened to be a staunch Republican, and on Aug. 24, 1920, Jolson, his charisma and 70 of his fellow actors got on trains and rode from Chicago and New York to Ohio. With the help of a jazzy marching band, they paraded down the street from the station to Harding’s house (the campaign had renamed it Victory Way, and decked it with cardboard arches), singing, chanting and leading a growing trail of Harding supporters, visitors, Marionites and starstruck movie fans,” AtlasObscura.com recalls. The whole contingent capped things off by singing Harding You’re The Man For Us, which Jolson had written quickly for the occasion, possibly while on the train. The song was the first of its kind for a presidential election and became Harding’s official campaign song. He beat Democrat James Cox in a landslide. So it all started with a song, which Taylor Swift might find comforting.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca