Celebrities are not political experts and should not be looked at as such – The Suffolk Journal

President Barack Obama tapes an episode of “The View” at ABC Studios in New York, NY on July 28, 2010.

Hollywood stars and other well-known celebrities have been dominating pop culture on a different level since the advent of social media and advancing technology. Like the average citizen, these well-known figures have the constitutional right to express their opinions, including on political issues. However, the difference between celebrities and the average person is that a celebrity has enormous influence.

Despite their great influence, the views of pop stars and Hollywood actors should not be held to an unusually high standard solely because of their fame.

There is perhaps no other celebrity more comfortable making outrageous and controversial claims on national television than Whoopi Goldberg. She has gained a lot of fame through her acting and her extremely popular talk show The View. Goldberg has used “The View” to express factually incorrect and outrageous views, and some do not go unpunished by the media. In Early 2022Goldberg claims that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race. Instead, the cause of the Holocaust was “man’s inhumanity to man.” whatever that means.

The public strongly criticized Goldberg after this statement. With public perception becoming clear, Goldberg didn't take long to comment to apologize for your ignorant comment. However, this did not change Goldberg's habit of expressing her political and global opinions on her show. Goldberg continued to apologize multiple times throughout 2022. While this isn't the first wildly inaccurate comment on “The View,” Goldberg lost significant credibility following the public outrage.

Celebrity interference has increased since former President Donald Trump entered the political scene, a phenomenon that has come close to encouraging celebrities to express themselves openly in politics. The anti-Trump bandwagon has always been an easy and socially acceptable group to loudly join in many social circles. Celebrities have been condemning Trump publicly and online for years, and almost nothing negative has been said about it.

A clear example is a post on “X” by Taylor Swift in May 2020 before the election between Trump and President Joe Biden. The tweet was in response to a tweet from Trump official White House Twitter account. In the tweet, Swift criticized Trump for threatening violence against participants in the riots following the death of George Floyd. The exact phrase she criticized was: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

If you were to just casually scroll through Swift's tweet, you could see that her take wasn't received very well. It was not their responsibility to demonize the president's proposed handling of nationwide protests and unrest that led to looting in many major cities.

Wealth and fame are fantastic blessings, but they do not mean being informed. But the most frightening thing about it isn't a tweet from four years ago; political influence which Swift reportedly did today without any legitimate reason.

Personally, I don't care who Swift votes for or who she chooses to support. But the fact that nearly a fifth of the country's voters might be more likely to vote for a Swift-endorsed candidate if she has no background at all in politics or government cannot be rationally explained. Maybe her music is great, maybe she's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Even if both of these statements are true, that doesn't mean she's remotely qualified to give political advice.

Celebrities have the constitutional right to express their thoughts and opinions, but the value we place on those thoughts and opinions is something we as a society must police. There is so much happening in the world every day, and we have to be careful about what we consider a credible source.