The celebrities are just as bought-and-paid-for as everyone else, and few will make waves. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:
Celebrities are reluctant to criticize the US-centralized empire because they benefit from it directly.
For the last eight months people have been expressing frustration and confusion about the reluctance of celebrities to use their immense platforms to speak out against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza. But it’s not really a mystery why this happens: celebrities are reluctant to criticize the US-centralized empire because they benefit from it directly.
It’s actually a very important aspect of imperial narrative control how all of our society’s largest and most influential voices are intimately dependent on the political status quo upon which the empire is built. Fame and fortune come as a result of being elevated by the wealthy owners of media production platforms like film studios, record labels, TV and news media, and those extremely wealthy people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo upon which their wealth is premised. Those who are threatening to the status quo are therefore not elevated to celebrity status, and the ones who get rich and famous either (A) understand this acutely or (B) are too shallow and vapid to have any interest in rocking the imperial boat.
Nobody becomes a superstar all on their own; it requires an extensively collaborative relationship with many individuals, and many of the most important of these are in positions of great wealth and power and have no desire to see socialism or anti-imperialism threaten their kingdoms by gaining a foothold in the political realities of their nation. This creates an impressively thorough gatekeeping system which filters out any clear-eyed rebels who might otherwise shine their way to the top.
Their handlers told them to keep quiet?
A society that has broken free of reality couldn’t handle it anyway.
Superstar? Barry says…you didn’t build that.
Selling your soul to ol’ Scratch might bring pleasures in this world but there is a price.
This just in from Black Sabbath:
Supertzar
Barbara Amiel, a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph, revealed that during a reception at her house, the ambassador of “a major EU country” told guests that the world’s current troubles were all the fault of “that shitty little country Israel.” “Why,” he asked, “should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?”
The ambassador was quickly identified by others as Daniel Bernard, France’s man in London and one of President Chirac’s closest confidants.
(h/t-TG)