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This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.
Taylor, Beyoncé, if you’re listening, if you want to come on MOO and talk to us —
Oh, definitely.
Yeah, we’re here.
We’ll kick Ross off for that.
If you want to come on MOO —
No question.
— and talk to us by contacting Tressie first, I just want to inject there.
Yes, no.
That is totally fair.
From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lydia Polgreen.
I’m Michelle Cottle.
I’m Ross Douthat.
And this is “Matter of Opinion.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So, this week is Carlos’s turn to be out, but in his place, we have invited our brilliant colleague, Tressie McMillan Cottom. Tressie is a sociologist and a cultural critic and also a columnist here at “The New York Times.” And she has become one of our foremost intellectuals on many subjects, including the way popular culture shapes politics and vice versa, all of which makes her a perfect guest for today’s episode. Welcome, Tressie.
It’s a real pleasure, truly.
Thanks for joining us, Tressie.
Oh, you say that now. Just wait.
Come on in.
Just wait.
I was trying to be sinister. You know?
Oh, were you?
Dracula greeting Jonathan Harker, kind of thing.
Oh, that was dear.
Lydia is already tired of us.
God, I heard these — this is going to be a fun one, though. Buckle up.
So, the reason that I’ve gathered you all here together to talk is because it is an election year. You may have heard. It is also a year in which two of the world’s biggest, most brilliant shining stars, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, are releasing new albums.
So this confluence has me thinking about the role of celebrity and politics. Do celebrities actually have political power? Can they actually influence our political opinions and our politicians? Some celebrities have successfully become politicians themselves. So —
Even presidents.
[LAUGHS]: Hold your horses. We’ll get to that. But before we jump into all that, I want to start with a bit of a wager. When do you guys think we’ll see Beyoncé and Taylor Swift endorse? Will they endorse? Last time around, in 2020, Taylor waited until October, and Beyoncé until November, but what do you guys think?
I’ll say around those times, when you want to wait late enough that people are paying attention, but you can’t wait so late that the early voters have already done their thing. Increasingly, that’s an issue. So I’ll go with October.
Mm, October surprise.
Yeah, not much of a surprise, which is why I think October and November, too. Everybody knows who the candidates are. These are two very known quantities. This isn’t actually like the last election, where there was a little bit more contentiousness. Celebrities don’t set agendas. They tend to follow them. So, with less risk about what the prevailing winds are, it might be a little earlier, but no huge surprise.
You’re not expecting a RFK surprise, are you?
Yeah, I was going to say, what about RFK?
What about RFK?
He has a running mate now.
He should have gone with Taylor.
I wonder if there’s a 40 percent chance that Taylor Swift does not endorse this time around.
Hmm.
I think the very scale of her celebrity right now means there’s slightly more of a chance that she doesn’t want to touch politics this year.
You’re just hoping they’ll be on their honeymoon by October.
No, no, no, no. But I mean, they were in Malibu — not that I’m following.
All right. I was going to say, you’re watching pretty closely.
You’re watching pretty closely, Ross. It’s a secret.
I didn’t know that.
I mean, look, it’s not —
I had no idea.
It’s just for the football. I’m just in it for the football, OK?
Just in it for the football, guys.
See, and I actually think it’s the exact opposite. I think it is precisely because Taylor Swift’s universality has become what it is, that she will have to do something nominally political.
That’s what modern celebrity has become, right, is what especially her fan base expects of her, in a way that Beyoncé‘s fan base does not expect it of her, especially in an election where race is not very significant among the candidates. Taylor Swift, I actually think, will be held responsible for saying something, sort of milquetoast sure, but something political about the presidential election, in a way.
Well, let’s hold up there for a second because I’d love to hear you, Tressie, talk about their respective fanbases. Give us a kind of sociologist bird’s eye view on these two tribes and who they are and what they care about.
And tribes might be the exact right way to think about it. They are fandoms, but they are also consumer groups. And if you are a politician right now, you are thirsty for both of those, right? You want a rabid, devoted, emotionally driven base of people. And that’s why politicians look to celebrities during election seasons.
This election season, by the way, I would point out, is the post-Dobbs election. I think the midterm elections demonstrated that. Polling continues to echo that. And so Beyoncé and Taylor Swift’s fan base is really significant right now. They pull in women.
Beyoncé, on top of that, has a really strong — and there’s no way to even say how strong and devoted her Black female and queer fan base is. It’s on lock in a way that is hard to describe. So, yes, her fan base is multiracial, but she definitely has a more sort of a Black female and queer fan base.
Taylor Swift is extremely popular with white female fans, I think especially sort of like aging millennials and xennials, people who came of age with her. So if you are a politician right now and you are at all aware of the fact that angry, scared women are shifting the political needle, you might be thinking that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are uniquely suited celebrity endorsements.
And they’re obviously going to be much sought after, and it’s probably no surprise where, if they do endorse, where their endorsements will go.
Well, yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Trump would love — he would love the endorsement —
He loves any endorsement. [LAUGHS]
— but, you know.
Well, you’re talking about two, obviously, huge stars that nobody quite reaches that level. But what about men? Do you see anyone who even approaches a level that matters? Who’s out there, Tressie? Who?
Oh, I do not know men. I do not know about the men. What are the men?
A woman after my own heart.
Ross, do you know the men? OK —
I mean —
— it’s hard to think of a comparable male celebrity.
We’re not even asking them to be that good. Like, just, is there anyone who’s even entering the picture?
Guys, good news. We have a man here. He can answer.
Yes, Ross. Where are the men?
Yes, I mean, no. The coveted David Beckham endorsement. Well, I mean, I think in all seriousness, I do think that the biggest male athletes in the world have some vaguely comparable position, but not at all in the same way.
It’s interesting, right? Because I think that there are lots of different kinds of celebrities. And when you look at the kind of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift level, it’s very clear. But then you have other — and I think that this is a place where there actually are a lot of very, very influential men.
I think about someone like the YouTuber, Mr. Beast, or, of course, Joe Rogan, the sort of nastier end of the spectrum, someone like Andrew Tate. There are men in media who are celebrities that don’t show up in the way that we think of, quote unquote, “celebrity” that, actually, I think, do have a tremendous amount of influence. And yeah, I’m just curious about figures like that.
Yeah, so we actually call that microcelebrities. And I do think this is the era of microcelebrity. So one of the things that’s remarkable about Beyoncé and Taylor Swift is that they are an uber celebrity in an era of microcelebrities, and a microcelebrity being someone who is famous with a niche population, and the general public can become aware of them in a flash moment. And you’re like, who is this guy? We’ve all had that moment where, like, who are these people? Everybody’s suddenly talking about this person.
And so, some of Taylor Swift’s and Beyoncé‘s power is about the fact that they are universally known in this moment of microcelebrity. But we keep talking about this as if it does matter. And I did want to stick a pin in that because I talked to some political scientists when everybody was kind of going gaga about Taylor Swift could swing the election if she could get everybody to register to vote, sort of thing. And I was like, either I have lost my mind, or I remember that that’s not how it worked.
Well, that’s one question I had, is, like, what’s the difference substantively from, say, Taylor Swift endorsing a particular politician versus Taylor Swift just telling everybody, it is very important that you vote. Go register to vote.
Yeah. So, yeah, those are two distinct things. And this is one of the issues I think we have, which is we confuse all political activity with electoral politics, especially during the political season. But I think that’s just the American way.
So, like, everybody makes a really big deal about this moment recently where Taylor Swift made an Instagram post where she encouraged her followers to register to vote. And something like 35,000 new voters were said to have registered at the nonprofit that she directed them to.
And we think of that as like electoral politics. It’s certainly a precondition for it, but I would argue, Michelle, to your point, that’s more of a consciousness raising, to use the old feminist term. It is bringing some issue into your awareness. That’s not the same as the actual sort of having the infrastructure to actually get out and vote. And so, it can make it really easy to be slippery with those terms. It’s just not quite how it works.
So even when we’re talking about how much celebrities matter, they may matter more for attention than they do for anything that we would consider like electoral politics.
Yeah, it’s interesting. There was a survey in 2019 by Hill-HarrisX that said that 65 percent of respondents said that political endorsements from Hollywood celebrities have no bearing on their voting decisions, and most surprisingly, said that 24 percent said that celebrity endorsements would make them less likely to vote for the celebrities’ preferred candidate.
So I think there is an element of people not wanting to be told what to do. But I think there’s also, just more broadly, I think this sort of difference between politics and issues and a way in which celebrities, I think, perhaps have and can put issues on the map, or can pay a really, really big price for taking a strong stand on a political issue, both of which have happened.
Well, you look at something like all of the conflict in Sudan over the many years. Long ago, I lived next door to the Sudanese embassy, and Al Sharpton would come and chain himself to the front door periodically or whatever. And then we moved away, and I was always kind of sorry because shortly after that, George Clooney got involved, and he would go and I’m like, well, why couldn’t George Clooney have been chaining himself next door?
So you have celebrities who pick an issue, Angelina Jolie and the global refugee crisis, things like that, that do spotlight issues that most Americans, and certainly, people who are stargazing at Hollywood stars wouldn’t necessarily think otherwise. On the right, you get things like Charlton Heston with gun rights over the years. And so, I think with issues, it’s slightly different.
Well, thankfully, George Clooney solved Sudan because nothing bad is happening there at the moment.
Exactly.
So I’m very pleased.
I’m glad that he intervened.
Just as well as Richard Gere freed Tibet, so.
Oh, I’d forgotten about that.
Oh, the Chinese, the Chinese government has not forgotten about that.
‘Cause they have not. Yeah, they wouldn’t.
You will not be going there.
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s an interesting dynamic where I think both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, they create more of a sense among observers that they could have a political impact, precisely because they aren’t microcelebrities, but they have a little bit of that kind of microcelebrity identification from their fan base.
Like, I was sort of, again, trying to turn over really big male celebrities, the sort of Tom Cruise or Will Smith at their peak or something like that. And none of those guys have, at least in my experience, being a man among men, have that kind of the sense of identification that you get from hardcore Taylor Swift fans, of whom there are several in my house, and hardcore Beyoncé fans.
And I think it’s like Swift and Beyoncé seem to have the celebrity of a Tom Cruise, but with the identification of a Joe Rogan listener or something, where it did seem to matter for a little while that Joe Rogan was into Bernie Sanders. People were like, oh, yeah, it would make sense that the Joe Rogan listener could be persuaded to support Bernie, just by virtue of Rogan’s own interests. And you sort of feel that with Swift and Beyoncé, but you also get this sense that, at least, I see with Swift, especially where fans really closely identify with the celebrity.
But if the celebrity does something that the fan doesn’t immediately sort of like, they don’t just follow the celebrity. They become sort of disappointed with the celebrity, right? It’s like when Taylor Swift was dating a musician who had said some unwoke or politically incorrect things, and there was this whole group of Taylor Swift fans who were like, doesn’t she understand she has a responsibility to us?
Yeah, I think some of that is because we think that celebrities move their fan base, when, in fact, what we know is that, no, it’s the fans that move celebrities.
Totally, yeah.
And so, that’s why it gets really complicated when, in the instance of Taylor Swift’s fans being disappointed when she’s dating a guy who says racist, sexist things, when she has espoused that these are not her values, and she — I mean, they might have broken up for many reasons, but it certainly seemed to not be good for her brand anymore to be with this guy. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m not going to overindex that because I don’t know Taylor personally.
But —
Don’t we all know Taylor personally? I mean, come on. Don’t sell yourself short, right? I mean, you know Taylor Swift.
What’s your relationship here, Ross? I don’t know Taylor personally. However, if she liked to reach out, I’m willing to think about a relationship.
[LAUGHS]: You’d have coffee.
If she’s listening.
She seems lovely.
It’s interesting because I think you’re right that celebrities follow rather than lead. And it’s been interesting to note that sort of the big issue right now, particularly on the left and among progressives, is Gaza. And I think Taylor Swift has — I think she sort of quietly attended one fundraiser for Gaza, but has not really made a public statement. As far as I know, I don’t think Beyoncé has said anything.
And I think that really does speak to the kind of risk aversion — these are giant billion dollar brands, right? And I think that, in some ways, the care that these giant billion dollar brands are taking around what is a very, very delicate difficult issue in American domestic politics right now kind of speaks to your broader point, Tressie, which is that these are fundamentally small c conservative institutions.
I had an identity question for you, Tressie, like speaking to Ross’s thing about fans identifying with certain celebrities. This kind of takes me back an age bracket, at least, to the Oprah question. Like, how does Oprah fit into all this? I mean, it’s a completely, on one hand, a completely different kind of celebrity, but on the other hand, like, huge. It was hard there for a while to think of anybody bigger than Oprah.
And she’s said to have played a huge role in helping Obama get the Democratic nomination in 2008.
So when we’re parsing the types of celebrities.
Yeah. Old school, old school, and this is getting ready to hurt. I’m about to hurt my own feelings and maybe yours as well. So I would say Oprah Winfrey is the pinnacle of a 20th century celebrity model that really doesn’t exist anymore in that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are kind of keeping alive into the 21st century by doing a lot of modifications to it. So a lot of playing up to that parasocial relationship that Ross talks about. So they lean into it heavy.
Friendship, friendship.
Yes, these are my close friends.
My close friends. Come on.
They give them little names. I don’t know if you’re Swifty. You’re in the Beehive, right? You’ve got an official designation. I don’t remember anybody talking about being in the Oprah hive or the Winfrey club, right? But that’s them modifying that 20th century celebrity model for the new 21st century reality. And I suspect we’ll never see this type of uber celebrity again after we sort of cycle through them.
But yeah, Oprah was the height of that kind of celebrity, didn’t quite need the same sort of parasocial caretaking that celebrities need to do now. She was able to come into your home every day in a way that media just can’t do anymore, and dealing with sort of once-in-a-generation politicians. Barack Obama was the first politician she’d ever done that for in all of her celebrity career.
And I remember her talking publicly about deliberating about the risk of doing that, Lydia. It was very risky, even with all of her celebrity star power. And it’s only become riskier in the 21st century, when people have so many options. There’s so many ways to get your psychosocial fix. And so, it’s only become more complicated, I think, for these multinational billion dollar celebrity brands to navigate what do my fans want when, increasingly, fans want everything.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I feel like we’ve sort of been dancing around this, but we actually have a genuine, certified celebrity who is one of the contenders in the current presidential race, right?
Yep, that’s right.
And as I was thinking about and preparing for this episode, I was thinking about not just celebrities who dabble in politics as supporters or endorsers or things like that, but celebrities who have become politicians.
And obviously, we are all familiar with one Donald John Trump, who was a big celebrity before he came. And he ticks a lot of these boxes that we talked about when we were talking about Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. I mean, it’s unclear whether he is actually a millionaire. Allegedly, he is, although he seems to be having trouble putting his hands on some cash these days.
Liquidity.
But he has a highly emotionally engaged fan base, right? And he also has what seems to be a very strong parasocial relationship with his community. It’s striking to me that the sort of two examples of celebrity presidents that we’ve had have actually both been from the right. So Donald — Ronald Reagan, not Donald Reagan. That’s a Freudian slip.
Donald Reagan.
Donald Reagan. Ronald Reagan, of course, being the first example, although he had two terms as governor of California, so at least was prepared, in some way, to ascend to the presidency, whereas in the case of Donald Trump, it’s just pure, you know —
Went from “The Apprentice” to the White House.
The White House.
: But that struck me as interesting because we tend to think of and conservatives grumble about how Hollywood and the celebrity complex is just a bunch of liberals. So it’s interesting to me that the two sort of examples that we have of celebrities ascending to the presidency are actually Republicans, and Republicans, who, I think, have pulled their party and, in some ways, the country significantly to the right.
Well, these things are all connected, though, right? Because Republicans are so unhappy with their lack of celebrity representation that they are therefore more easily star struck by various kinds of both New York — I mean, Trump is a New York celebrity, which is a different thing from a Hollywood celebrity. But I do think — this is not really a joke. I think Republicans are slightly more easily star-struck by celebrities in politics, precisely because celebrity is coded as liberal in our culture.
That’s exactly right.
Well, then you wind up with Fred Thompson in the Senate.
Yeah, that didn’t work out.
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fred Grandy was in the House off “Love Boat.”
Gopher from “Love Boat“?
Well, Sonny Bono.
Sonny Bono!
Yeah, cannot forget Sonny Bono.
Yeah.
Can’t you, though, Ross?
I mean, there’s a lot of people I can’t forget.
Well, Ted Nugent is some huge —
Oh.
Well, that’s a different thing. OK, so, no, there’s different things. Donald Trump was a legitimate celebrity, legitimately famous. And —
Are you saying Ted Nugent is not legitimately famous?
Ted Nugent is a separate category of not so awesome celebrities who Republicans desperately glom onto because they want to say, oh, we’ve got some celebrity endorsers, too.
Two words — Scott Baio.
But that’s, interestingly, both Reagan and Trump, in different ways, start out as non-Republicans, right?
Correct.
And then migrate into the Republican fold, change the party in various ways, not just by making it more conservative — I think that the changes are more complicated than that. But that’s what you want to do. If you’re a celebrity, if you’re a big celebrity who wants to be in politics, who doesn’t just want to send the emails and do the fundraisers, you want to get in the game, you really should migrate into the Republican coalition. That’s where the opportunity is.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
Yes.
I mean, it’s a hard bigotry. Let’s not kid ourselves.
But yeah, no, that’s exactly it. The threshold is lower. The risk is lower. And the reward is far greater. In the Democratic Party, you are competing with George Clooney, a genetically gifted human being.
That is such a good way to put that.
Right?
Some of us are competing with George Clooney every day of our lives, Tressie, so.
Yeah, so the competitive field for celebrity is far thinner, more shallow on the Republican side. And I think Ross is exactly right here. We can’t overstate the degree of self-consciousness in the Republican Party about celebrity being coded liberal or progressive or Democratic. So, yeah, they are much more inclined to accept whatever celebrity they can get, and then to build the infrastructure to produce their own celebrities. This is the other thing.
I think we also see that in the parallel of conservative media, right, we’ve been shut out so we can produce our own sort of celebrity. And someone as savvy with the instincts of Donald Trump was able to leverage that in a really — I think he deserves credit for this. However you feel about him, I think it’s dangerous to not give him credit for how well he leverages those impulses within both the Republican Party and sort of the conservative culture to create official bona fide political celebrity for himself.
But it really helps that he starts outside. Because the kind of celebrities that are created inside the conservative infrastructure, they’re like hothouse flowers. Marjorie Taylor Greene can win House Republican primaries, but she’s never going to be what Trump is because Trump spent part of his career in life speaking to people who were not movement conservatives.
And that’s why he was able to bring into the Republican coalition people who couldn’t care less, well, about Ronald Reagan. There’s just a much higher percentage in being the person from outside conservative world who comes in than there is in being homegrown, I think.
I also think that Donald Trump sort of speaks to the way in which what we think of as a celebrity is changing. I mean, we’re at a point where, arguably, Jeff Bezos, who’s one of the richest men in the world, is a celebrity, right? He gets covered on Page 6, and his relationship drama is fodder for the gossip pages and whatnot.
You think about someone like Elon Musk, these huge technology titans. They have direct access to huge audiences via social media platforms. They have huge fan bases, in some cases. And I think it’s also important that Donald Trump became a celebrity not through being a movie star, although he was in “Home Alone,” as everyone knows. But he — was it “Home Alone” or “Home Alone 2“? I always get —
“Home Alone 2.”
“Home Alone 2.” All right. Lost in Manhattan, that’s right. But his celebrity is of, I think, a sort of a newer and the celebrity that vaulted him to the presidency via reality television, which is a novel format, as opposed to having Ronald Reagan come through the old Hollywood studio system.
I just wanted to raise a question that goes back to something that, I think, Tressie, you said about Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, that they sort of are trying to reinvent celebrity. But you said something like, you’re not sure if there can be anyone after them.
Right, yeah.
Because I think this is a question for all of us as Gen X adjacent, at least, people, right, is that the biggest celebrities right now, including movie stars — like Tom Cruise is still a really big movie star — all seem to have been formed —
From the older model.
Right, before — and even Trump. Yes, reality TV is new as of 2001, but it’s not a post-social media kind of phenomenon. So can you imagine celebrity on the scale of either Taylor Swift or Donald Trump being created now? And maybe there’s a way in which Swift and company seem so big because they got in just under the wire.
That’s right.
They’re like the last true celebrities.
Yeah, I think of them as bridges to whatever is coming next. And I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure that what will be coming next will be something better, or if I’m going to be optimistic, it may not be worse either, because there’s a lot to be said for, again, how much we relied on celebrity to create this mass culture that probably helped us paper over really meaningful differences in American public life.
But also, what we are seeing is like a world of microcelebrities also leads to a type of division and the dissolution of shared reality. And that’s also not good. So I mean, I think there’s some positives and negatives there. But I think, undoubtedly, what Ross is saying is exactly true, that the biggest celebrities, those with that global awareness index, are those that built their initial level of celebrity before social media.
Social media has fragmented what it takes to be a celebrity. And in fact, celebrities might still work with xellenials, but when you start getting into Gen Z, they are actually a little resistant to celebrity culture. To be a fan takes a lot of intense sincerity, and that’s kind of cringey to very young people.
And so, those things are kind of at odds with each other. They want a certain type of authenticity and everydayness that celebrity is just not built to give you, right? Celebrity is supposed to be otherworldly. And so, I do think we’re seeing this reworking of what celebrity is, which will be interesting for a political model that over the last, like — I always forget what decade we’re in. We’re probably, what, 90, like 30 years?
I’d say the 2040s. 2040s, yeah.
How long ago was the ‘90s? However long ago that was, like —
Don’t answer that. We don’t talk about that.
But politics really subsumed a lot of characteristics of celebrity. And I think we might be on a bit of a crash course here with how celebrity has been reworked and people’s rejection of it.
But for the time being, we’re seeing the people who are of age to vote, who are likely voters at that, are ones who understand celebrity culture, have been brought up in it, know how it works, derive a lot of pyschosocial benefit from it. Somebody like a Trump character knows how to manipulate it and use it. We don’t have anybody on the left that knows how to do it nearly as well. But on the flip side, to Ross’s point, there’s nobody else on the right who can do it as well as he can either.
Well, that brings me to my final question for each of you. Is there an endorsement that you think could move the needle in this election, assuming that it’s Trump and Biden come November? Can you think of anybody, any celebrity, business leader, like someone who’s famous? It doesn’t matter what they’re famous for — that could change the course.
Oh, man. Our producers are going to be mad. They hate silence.
Dead air. Dead air.
I’m saying no for an endorsement, but somebody gets a wild hair and put somebody funky on the ticket — then we’ll talk.
We talked about Oprah briefly, right? And if you think that the Oprah Winfrey endorsement made a big difference to Obama, you can see it as effectively kind of giving a lot of Democratic voters permission to do something that they already wanted to do.
I feel like that was true with a bunch of the endorsements for Obama, getting sort of African-American leaders, other Democratic politicians to say, yeah, this is the guy. It’s safe to go for him, you know. He’s not going to let you down. And then, what is the equivalent of that? At the current moment, it makes me think that, probably, it’s Trump who stands to benefit more.
I was gonna say that, Ross. You took my point.
No, no, then go. Then go. Trump, yeah.
No, I agree with — my thought was, it’s Donald Trump. Trump’s endorsement could change the election. The problem is, he’s all in on Trump.
Well, that’s the real — I wasn’t going that far, right? I was trying to think of someone who was basically giving some people permission to vote for Trump, who feel bad about voting for Trump. It’s a different case than Obama, but people who feel guilty about voting for Trump and are given permission. And in that sense, maybe it’s Trump’s running mate, which isn’t really an endorsement, but it’s like a sort of statement. I don’t know.
That’s why I, as you may recall, in a prior episode, said that picking Nikki Haley as his running mate and getting her to accept it would probably be the ultimate endorsement. What Biden really needs is someone to endorse him at his age. Dolly Parton endorsing Biden?
No, that’s —
OK.
No, you need —
Let me just say. Let me just say.
On the question of his age!
I don’t know if a Dolly Parton endorsement could matter. But a Dolly Parton figure — and now, you do say something interesting here. Dolly Parton is interesting as a celebrity because her universality is unchallenged in a way that Beyoncé‘s and Taylor Swift’s is not.
But precisely because she has so steadfastly kept herself out of politics, that if she were to enter the political fray, it would, I think, for some people, signal, oh, the stakes are so high that even Dolly Parton has had to break her covenant with herself about being political. I think it would ruin Dolly Parton for millions of people. And I can’t imagine her ever doing — everybody that I’ve ever talked to around her says it’s never going to happen. But OK, I will now maybe amend my vote, Lydia. I think a Dolly Parton —
There you go.
— could maybe not change the election because, again, I don’t think any celebrity could do that, but she could change the stakes of the election for some people.
Hm, interesting. OK, well, let’s leave it there. And when we come back, we’ll get Hot and Cold.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And finally, it’s time for “Hot, Cold,” where every week, one of us shares something we’re into, over, or somewhere in between. So, Tressie, you got one for us this week?
Oh, I am very hot on vitamin D.
Ooh.
I don’t want to come off sounding like Dr. Oz or anything, but vitamin D has changed my life.
How are you getting vitamin D?
I have to take — there is apparently a supplement you get a prescription for that is like an extremely high amount. So this is one of the benefits of social media, by the way. Someone on social media told me this. I asked my doctor, a doctor who has known I’m vitamin D deficient for years and had never mentioned it. And she goes, oh, yeah, I can do that. And so, I start taking this vitamin D supplement. All of a sudden, I think I’m a nicer, kinder person.
Impossible, but all right, sure.
Aw, thank you. And I am more energetic, and I’m sleeping better. And it has been amazing, how it has transformed my life. And if there was just an easier way to do it —
How long did it take?
It’s just been great.
Tell me, tell me.
I don’t think it was a couple of weeks, Michelle.
Wow.
I mean, it’s been the most impactful thing I’ve probably done for myself in a decade.
Oh, my goodness.
I’m all over that.
Wow.
Everybody has a vitamin D deficiency, apparently. Like, my kids have both been on those —
They say it’s so American.
— IV prescription things.
Just the winters in New England, I mean, you feel it when the sun starts to hit you again.
Women, people of color, Americans, everybody needs it.
Conservative newspaper columnist we all need.
That’s right. We all need it in our body.
All the major groups need vitamin D.
I love this, Tressie, because it just really has brought us all together. And ultimately, I feel like that’s your role in the world. You know? You bring us all together.
Oh, thank you.
Who could be against vitamin D? Now, vitamin C, on the other hand, that’s polarizing.
Ross, stop.
All right, well, I’m really glad that you came to visit with us today. Thank you.
Please come back again. Yes, definitely.
I will come back anytime, and I mean that. Thanks for having me.
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Thanks for joining us today. Give “Matter of Opinion” a follow on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a nice review while you’re there, so other people can find us and give the show a try.
“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett, and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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transcript
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.
Taylor, Beyoncé, if you’re listening, if you want to come on MOO and talk to us —
Oh, definitely.
Yeah, we’re here.
We’ll kick Ross off for that.
If you want to come on MOO —
No question.
— and talk to us by contacting Tressie first, I just want to inject there.
Yes, no.
That is totally fair.
From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lydia Polgreen.
I’m Michelle Cottle.
I’m Ross Douthat.
And this is “Matter of Opinion.”
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So, this week is Carlos’s turn to be out, but in his place, we have invited our brilliant colleague, Tressie McMillan Cottom. Tressie is a sociologist and a cultural critic and also a columnist here at “The New York Times.” And she has become one of our foremost intellectuals on many subjects, including the way popular culture shapes politics and vice versa, all of which makes her a perfect guest for today’s episode. Welcome, Tressie.
It’s a real pleasure, truly.
Thanks for joining us, Tressie.
Oh, you say that now. Just wait.
Come on in.
Just wait.
I was trying to be sinister. You know?
Oh, were you?
Dracula greeting Jonathan Harker, kind of thing.
Oh, that was dear.
Lydia is already tired of us.
God, I heard these — this is going to be a fun one, though. Buckle up.
So, the reason that I’ve gathered you all here together to talk is because it is an election year. You may have heard. It is also a year in which two of the world’s biggest, most brilliant shining stars, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, are releasing new albums.
So this confluence has me thinking about the role of celebrity and politics. Do celebrities actually have political power? Can they actually influence our political opinions and our politicians? Some celebrities have successfully become politicians themselves. So —
Even presidents.
[LAUGHS]: Hold your horses. We’ll get to that. But before we jump into all that, I want to start with a bit of a wager. When do you guys think we’ll see Beyoncé and Taylor Swift endorse? Will they endorse? Last time around, in 2020, Taylor waited until October, and Beyoncé until November, but what do you guys think?
I’ll say around those times, when you want to wait late enough that people are paying attention, but you can’t wait so late that the early voters have already done their thing. Increasingly, that’s an issue. So I’ll go with October.
Mm, October surprise.
Yeah, not much of a surprise, which is why I think October and November, too. Everybody knows who the candidates are. These are two very known quantities. This isn’t actually like the last election, where there was a little bit more contentiousness. Celebrities don’t set agendas. They tend to follow them. So, with less risk about what the prevailing winds are, it might be a little earlier, but no huge surprise.
You’re not expecting a RFK surprise, are you?
Yeah, I was going to say, what about RFK?
What about RFK?
He has a running mate now.
He should have gone with Taylor.
I wonder if there’s a 40 percent chance that Taylor Swift does not endorse this time around.
Hmm.
I think the very scale of her celebrity right now means there’s slightly more of a chance that she doesn’t want to touch politics this year.
You’re just hoping they’ll be on their honeymoon by October.
No, no, no, no. But I mean, they were in Malibu — not that I’m following.
All right. I was going to say, you’re watching pretty closely.
You’re watching pretty closely, Ross. It’s a secret.
I didn’t know that.
I mean, look, it’s not —
I had no idea.
It’s just for the football. I’m just in it for the football, OK?
Just in it for the football, guys.
See, and I actually think it’s the exact opposite. I think it is precisely because Taylor Swift’s universality has become what it is, that she will have to do something nominally political.
That’s what modern celebrity has become, right, is what especially her fan base expects of her, in a way that Beyoncé‘s fan base does not expect it of her, especially in an election where race is not very significant among the candidates. Taylor Swift, I actually think, will be held responsible for saying something, sort of milquetoast sure, but something political about the presidential election, in a way.
Well, let’s hold up there for a second because I’d love to hear you, Tressie, talk about their respective fanbases. Give us a kind of sociologist bird’s eye view on these two tribes and who they are and what they care about.
And tribes might be the exact right way to think about it. They are fandoms, but they are also consumer groups. And if you are a politician right now, you are thirsty for both of those, right? You want a rabid, devoted, emotionally driven base of people. And that’s why politicians look to celebrities during election seasons.
This election season, by the way, I would point out, is the post-Dobbs election. I think the midterm elections demonstrated that. Polling continues to echo that. And so Beyoncé and Taylor Swift’s fan base is really significant right now. They pull in women.
Beyoncé, on top of that, has a really strong — and there’s no way to even say how strong and devoted her Black female and queer fan base is. It’s on lock in a way that is hard to describe. So, yes, her fan base is multiracial, but she definitely has a more sort of a Black female and queer fan base.
Taylor Swift is extremely popular with white female fans, I think especially sort of like aging millennials and xennials, people who came of age with her. So if you are a politician right now and you are at all aware of the fact that angry, scared women are shifting the political needle, you might be thinking that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are uniquely suited celebrity endorsements.
And they’re obviously going to be much sought after, and it’s probably no surprise where, if they do endorse, where their endorsements will go.
Well, yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Trump would love — he would love the endorsement —
He loves any endorsement. [LAUGHS]
— but, you know.
Well, you’re talking about two, obviously, huge stars that nobody quite reaches that level. But what about men? Do you see anyone who even approaches a level that matters? Who’s out there, Tressie? Who?
Oh, I do not know men. I do not know about the men. What are the men?
A woman after my own heart.
Ross, do you know the men? OK —
I mean —
— it’s hard to think of a comparable male celebrity.
We’re not even asking them to be that good. Like, just, is there anyone who’s even entering the picture?
Guys, good news. We have a man here. He can answer.
Yes, Ross. Where are the men?
Yes, I mean, no. The coveted David Beckham endorsement. Well, I mean, I think in all seriousness, I do think that the biggest male athletes in the world have some vaguely comparable position, but not at all in the same way.
It’s interesting, right? Because I think that there are lots of different kinds of celebrities. And when you look at the kind of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift level, it’s very clear. But then you have other — and I think that this is a place where there actually are a lot of very, very influential men.
I think about someone like the YouTuber, Mr. Beast, or, of course, Joe Rogan, the sort of nastier end of the spectrum, someone like Andrew Tate. There are men in media who are celebrities that don’t show up in the way that we think of, quote unquote, “celebrity” that, actually, I think, do have a tremendous amount of influence. And yeah, I’m just curious about figures like that.
Yeah, so we actually call that microcelebrities. And I do think this is the era of microcelebrity. So one of the things that’s remarkable about Beyoncé and Taylor Swift is that they are an uber celebrity in an era of microcelebrities, and a microcelebrity being someone who is famous with a niche population, and the general public can become aware of them in a flash moment. And you’re like, who is this guy? We’ve all had that moment where, like, who are these people? Everybody’s suddenly talking about this person.
And so, some of Taylor Swift’s and Beyoncé‘s power is about the fact that they are universally known in this moment of microcelebrity. But we keep talking about this as if it does matter. And I did want to stick a pin in that because I talked to some political scientists when everybody was kind of going gaga about Taylor Swift could swing the election if she could get everybody to register to vote, sort of thing. And I was like, either I have lost my mind, or I remember that that’s not how it worked.
Well, that’s one question I had, is, like, what’s the difference substantively from, say, Taylor Swift endorsing a particular politician versus Taylor Swift just telling everybody, it is very important that you vote. Go register to vote.
Yeah. So, yeah, those are two distinct things. And this is one of the issues I think we have, which is we confuse all political activity with electoral politics, especially during the political season. But I think that’s just the American way.
So, like, everybody makes a really big deal about this moment recently where Taylor Swift made an Instagram post where she encouraged her followers to register to vote. And something like 35,000 new voters were said to have registered at the nonprofit that she directed them to.
And we think of that as like electoral politics. It’s certainly a precondition for it, but I would argue, Michelle, to your point, that’s more of a consciousness raising, to use the old feminist term. It is bringing some issue into your awareness. That’s not the same as the actual sort of having the infrastructure to actually get out and vote. And so, it can make it really easy to be slippery with those terms. It’s just not quite how it works.
So even when we’re talking about how much celebrities matter, they may matter more for attention than they do for anything that we would consider like electoral politics.
Yeah, it’s interesting. There was a survey in 2019 by Hill-HarrisX that said that 65 percent of respondents said that political endorsements from Hollywood celebrities have no bearing on their voting decisions, and most surprisingly, said that 24 percent said that celebrity endorsements would make them less likely to vote for the celebrities’ preferred candidate.
So I think there is an element of people not wanting to be told what to do. But I think there’s also, just more broadly, I think this sort of difference between politics and issues and a way in which celebrities, I think, perhaps have and can put issues on the map, or can pay a really, really big price for taking a strong stand on a political issue, both of which have happened.
Well, you look at something like all of the conflict in Sudan over the many years. Long ago, I lived next door to the Sudanese embassy, and Al Sharpton would come and chain himself to the front door periodically or whatever. And then we moved away, and I was always kind of sorry because shortly after that, George Clooney got involved, and he would go and I’m like, well, why couldn’t George Clooney have been chaining himself next door?
So you have celebrities who pick an issue, Angelina Jolie and the global refugee crisis, things like that, that do spotlight issues that most Americans, and certainly, people who are stargazing at Hollywood stars wouldn’t necessarily think otherwise. On the right, you get things like Charlton Heston with gun rights over the years. And so, I think with issues, it’s slightly different.
Well, thankfully, George Clooney solved Sudan because nothing bad is happening there at the moment.
Exactly.
So I’m very pleased.
I’m glad that he intervened.
Just as well as Richard Gere freed Tibet, so.
Oh, I’d forgotten about that.
Oh, the Chinese, the Chinese government has not forgotten about that.
‘Cause they have not. Yeah, they wouldn’t.
You will not be going there.
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s an interesting dynamic where I think both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, they create more of a sense among observers that they could have a political impact, precisely because they aren’t microcelebrities, but they have a little bit of that kind of microcelebrity identification from their fan base.
Like, I was sort of, again, trying to turn over really big male celebrities, the sort of Tom Cruise or Will Smith at their peak or something like that. And none of those guys have, at least in my experience, being a man among men, have that kind of the sense of identification that you get from hardcore Taylor Swift fans, of whom there are several in my house, and hardcore Beyoncé fans.
And I think it’s like Swift and Beyoncé seem to have the celebrity of a Tom Cruise, but with the identification of a Joe Rogan listener or something, where it did seem to matter for a little while that Joe Rogan was into Bernie Sanders. People were like, oh, yeah, it would make sense that the Joe Rogan listener could be persuaded to support Bernie, just by virtue of Rogan’s own interests. And you sort of feel that with Swift and Beyoncé, but you also get this sense that, at least, I see with Swift, especially where fans really closely identify with the celebrity.
But if the celebrity does something that the fan doesn’t immediately sort of like, they don’t just follow the celebrity. They become sort of disappointed with the celebrity, right? It’s like when Taylor Swift was dating a musician who had said some unwoke or politically incorrect things, and there was this whole group of Taylor Swift fans who were like, doesn’t she understand she has a responsibility to us?
Yeah, I think some of that is because we think that celebrities move their fan base, when, in fact, what we know is that, no, it’s the fans that move celebrities.
Totally, yeah.
And so, that’s why it gets really complicated when, in the instance of Taylor Swift’s fans being disappointed when she’s dating a guy who says racist, sexist things, when she has espoused that these are not her values, and she — I mean, they might have broken up for many reasons, but it certainly seemed to not be good for her brand anymore to be with this guy. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m not going to overindex that because I don’t know Taylor personally.
But —
Don’t we all know Taylor personally? I mean, come on. Don’t sell yourself short, right? I mean, you know Taylor Swift.
What’s your relationship here, Ross? I don’t know Taylor personally. However, if she liked to reach out, I’m willing to think about a relationship.
[LAUGHS]: You’d have coffee.
If she’s listening.
She seems lovely.
It’s interesting because I think you’re right that celebrities follow rather than lead. And it’s been interesting to note that sort of the big issue right now, particularly on the left and among progressives, is Gaza. And I think Taylor Swift has — I think she sort of quietly attended one fundraiser for Gaza, but has not really made a public statement. As far as I know, I don’t think Beyoncé has said anything.
And I think that really does speak to the kind of risk aversion — these are giant billion dollar brands, right? And I think that, in some ways, the care that these giant billion dollar brands are taking around what is a very, very delicate difficult issue in American domestic politics right now kind of speaks to your broader point, Tressie, which is that these are fundamentally small c conservative institutions.
I had an identity question for you, Tressie, like speaking to Ross’s thing about fans identifying with certain celebrities. This kind of takes me back an age bracket, at least, to the Oprah question. Like, how does Oprah fit into all this? I mean, it’s a completely, on one hand, a completely different kind of celebrity, but on the other hand, like, huge. It was hard there for a while to think of anybody bigger than Oprah.
And she’s said to have played a huge role in helping Obama get the Democratic nomination in 2008.
So when we’re parsing the types of celebrities.
Yeah. Old school, old school, and this is getting ready to hurt. I’m about to hurt my own feelings and maybe yours as well. So I would say Oprah Winfrey is the pinnacle of a 20th century celebrity model that really doesn’t exist anymore in that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are kind of keeping alive into the 21st century by doing a lot of modifications to it. So a lot of playing up to that parasocial relationship that Ross talks about. So they lean into it heavy.
Friendship, friendship.
Yes, these are my close friends.
My close friends. Come on.
They give them little names. I don’t know if you’re Swifty. You’re in the Beehive, right? You’ve got an official designation. I don’t remember anybody talking about being in the Oprah hive or the Winfrey club, right? But that’s them modifying that 20th century celebrity model for the new 21st century reality. And I suspect we’ll never see this type of uber celebrity again after we sort of cycle through them.
But yeah, Oprah was the height of that kind of celebrity, didn’t quite need the same sort of parasocial caretaking that celebrities need to do now. She was able to come into your home every day in a way that media just can’t do anymore, and dealing with sort of once-in-a-generation politicians. Barack Obama was the first politician she’d ever done that for in all of her celebrity career.
And I remember her talking publicly about deliberating about the risk of doing that, Lydia. It was very risky, even with all of her celebrity star power. And it’s only become riskier in the 21st century, when people have so many options. There’s so many ways to get your psychosocial fix. And so, it’s only become more complicated, I think, for these multinational billion dollar celebrity brands to navigate what do my fans want when, increasingly, fans want everything.
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I feel like we’ve sort of been dancing around this, but we actually have a genuine, certified celebrity who is one of the contenders in the current presidential race, right?
Yep, that’s right.
And as I was thinking about and preparing for this episode, I was thinking about not just celebrities who dabble in politics as supporters or endorsers or things like that, but celebrities who have become politicians.
And obviously, we are all familiar with one Donald John Trump, who was a big celebrity before he came. And he ticks a lot of these boxes that we talked about when we were talking about Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. I mean, it’s unclear whether he is actually a millionaire. Allegedly, he is, although he seems to be having trouble putting his hands on some cash these days.
Liquidity.
But he has a highly emotionally engaged fan base, right? And he also has what seems to be a very strong parasocial relationship with his community. It’s striking to me that the sort of two examples of celebrity presidents that we’ve had have actually both been from the right. So Donald — Ronald Reagan, not Donald Reagan. That’s a Freudian slip.
Donald Reagan.
Donald Reagan. Ronald Reagan, of course, being the first example, although he had two terms as governor of California, so at least was prepared, in some way, to ascend to the presidency, whereas in the case of Donald Trump, it’s just pure, you know —
Went from “The Apprentice” to the White House.
The White House.
: But that struck me as interesting because we tend to think of and conservatives grumble about how Hollywood and the celebrity complex is just a bunch of liberals. So it’s interesting to me that the two sort of examples that we have of celebrities ascending to the presidency are actually Republicans, and Republicans, who, I think, have pulled their party and, in some ways, the country significantly to the right.
Well, these things are all connected, though, right? Because Republicans are so unhappy with their lack of celebrity representation that they are therefore more easily star struck by various kinds of both New York — I mean, Trump is a New York celebrity, which is a different thing from a Hollywood celebrity. But I do think — this is not really a joke. I think Republicans are slightly more easily star-struck by celebrities in politics, precisely because celebrity is coded as liberal in our culture.
That’s exactly right.
Well, then you wind up with Fred Thompson in the Senate.
Yeah, that didn’t work out.
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fred Grandy was in the House off “Love Boat.”
Gopher from “Love Boat“?
Well, Sonny Bono.
Sonny Bono!
Yeah, cannot forget Sonny Bono.
Yeah.
Can’t you, though, Ross?
I mean, there’s a lot of people I can’t forget.
Well, Ted Nugent is some huge —
Oh.
Well, that’s a different thing. OK, so, no, there’s different things. Donald Trump was a legitimate celebrity, legitimately famous. And —
Are you saying Ted Nugent is not legitimately famous?
Ted Nugent is a separate category of not so awesome celebrities who Republicans desperately glom onto because they want to say, oh, we’ve got some celebrity endorsers, too.
Two words — Scott Baio.
But that’s, interestingly, both Reagan and Trump, in different ways, start out as non-Republicans, right?
Correct.
And then migrate into the Republican fold, change the party in various ways, not just by making it more conservative — I think that the changes are more complicated than that. But that’s what you want to do. If you’re a celebrity, if you’re a big celebrity who wants to be in politics, who doesn’t just want to send the emails and do the fundraisers, you want to get in the game, you really should migrate into the Republican coalition. That’s where the opportunity is.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
Yes.
I mean, it’s a hard bigotry. Let’s not kid ourselves.
But yeah, no, that’s exactly it. The threshold is lower. The risk is lower. And the reward is far greater. In the Democratic Party, you are competing with George Clooney, a genetically gifted human being.
That is such a good way to put that.
Right?
Some of us are competing with George Clooney every day of our lives, Tressie, so.
Yeah, so the competitive field for celebrity is far thinner, more shallow on the Republican side. And I think Ross is exactly right here. We can’t overstate the degree of self-consciousness in the Republican Party about celebrity being coded liberal or progressive or Democratic. So, yeah, they are much more inclined to accept whatever celebrity they can get, and then to build the infrastructure to produce their own celebrities. This is the other thing.
I think we also see that in the parallel of conservative media, right, we’ve been shut out so we can produce our own sort of celebrity. And someone as savvy with the instincts of Donald Trump was able to leverage that in a really — I think he deserves credit for this. However you feel about him, I think it’s dangerous to not give him credit for how well he leverages those impulses within both the Republican Party and sort of the conservative culture to create official bona fide political celebrity for himself.
But it really helps that he starts outside. Because the kind of celebrities that are created inside the conservative infrastructure, they’re like hothouse flowers. Marjorie Taylor Greene can win House Republican primaries, but she’s never going to be what Trump is because Trump spent part of his career in life speaking to people who were not movement conservatives.
And that’s why he was able to bring into the Republican coalition people who couldn’t care less, well, about Ronald Reagan. There’s just a much higher percentage in being the person from outside conservative world who comes in than there is in being homegrown, I think.
I also think that Donald Trump sort of speaks to the way in which what we think of as a celebrity is changing. I mean, we’re at a point where, arguably, Jeff Bezos, who’s one of the richest men in the world, is a celebrity, right? He gets covered on Page 6, and his relationship drama is fodder for the gossip pages and whatnot.
You think about someone like Elon Musk, these huge technology titans. They have direct access to huge audiences via social media platforms. They have huge fan bases, in some cases. And I think it’s also important that Donald Trump became a celebrity not through being a movie star, although he was in “Home Alone,” as everyone knows. But he — was it “Home Alone” or “Home Alone 2“? I always get —
“Home Alone 2.”
“Home Alone 2.” All right. Lost in Manhattan, that’s right. But his celebrity is of, I think, a sort of a newer and the celebrity that vaulted him to the presidency via reality television, which is a novel format, as opposed to having Ronald Reagan come through the old Hollywood studio system.
I just wanted to raise a question that goes back to something that, I think, Tressie, you said about Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, that they sort of are trying to reinvent celebrity. But you said something like, you’re not sure if there can be anyone after them.
Right, yeah.
Because I think this is a question for all of us as Gen X adjacent, at least, people, right, is that the biggest celebrities right now, including movie stars — like Tom Cruise is still a really big movie star — all seem to have been formed —
From the older model.
Right, before — and even Trump. Yes, reality TV is new as of 2001, but it’s not a post-social media kind of phenomenon. So can you imagine celebrity on the scale of either Taylor Swift or Donald Trump being created now? And maybe there’s a way in which Swift and company seem so big because they got in just under the wire.
That’s right.
They’re like the last true celebrities.
Yeah, I think of them as bridges to whatever is coming next. And I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure that what will be coming next will be something better, or if I’m going to be optimistic, it may not be worse either, because there’s a lot to be said for, again, how much we relied on celebrity to create this mass culture that probably helped us paper over really meaningful differences in American public life.
But also, what we are seeing is like a world of microcelebrities also leads to a type of division and the dissolution of shared reality. And that’s also not good. So I mean, I think there’s some positives and negatives there. But I think, undoubtedly, what Ross is saying is exactly true, that the biggest celebrities, those with that global awareness index, are those that built their initial level of celebrity before social media.
Social media has fragmented what it takes to be a celebrity. And in fact, celebrities might still work with xellenials, but when you start getting into Gen Z, they are actually a little resistant to celebrity culture. To be a fan takes a lot of intense sincerity, and that’s kind of cringey to very young people.
And so, those things are kind of at odds with each other. They want a certain type of authenticity and everydayness that celebrity is just not built to give you, right? Celebrity is supposed to be otherworldly. And so, I do think we’re seeing this reworking of what celebrity is, which will be interesting for a political model that over the last, like — I always forget what decade we’re in. We’re probably, what, 90, like 30 years?
I’d say the 2040s. 2040s, yeah.
How long ago was the ‘90s? However long ago that was, like —
Don’t answer that. We don’t talk about that.
But politics really subsumed a lot of characteristics of celebrity. And I think we might be on a bit of a crash course here with how celebrity has been reworked and people’s rejection of it.
But for the time being, we’re seeing the people who are of age to vote, who are likely voters at that, are ones who understand celebrity culture, have been brought up in it, know how it works, derive a lot of pyschosocial benefit from it. Somebody like a Trump character knows how to manipulate it and use it. We don’t have anybody on the left that knows how to do it nearly as well. But on the flip side, to Ross’s point, there’s nobody else on the right who can do it as well as he can either.
Well, that brings me to my final question for each of you. Is there an endorsement that you think could move the needle in this election, assuming that it’s Trump and Biden come November? Can you think of anybody, any celebrity, business leader, like someone who’s famous? It doesn’t matter what they’re famous for — that could change the course.
Oh, man. Our producers are going to be mad. They hate silence.
Dead air. Dead air.
I’m saying no for an endorsement, but somebody gets a wild hair and put somebody funky on the ticket — then we’ll talk.
We talked about Oprah briefly, right? And if you think that the Oprah Winfrey endorsement made a big difference to Obama, you can see it as effectively kind of giving a lot of Democratic voters permission to do something that they already wanted to do.
I feel like that was true with a bunch of the endorsements for Obama, getting sort of African-American leaders, other Democratic politicians to say, yeah, this is the guy. It’s safe to go for him, you know. He’s not going to let you down. And then, what is the equivalent of that? At the current moment, it makes me think that, probably, it’s Trump who stands to benefit more.
I was gonna say that, Ross. You took my point.
No, no, then go. Then go. Trump, yeah.
No, I agree with — my thought was, it’s Donald Trump. Trump’s endorsement could change the election. The problem is, he’s all in on Trump.
Well, that’s the real — I wasn’t going that far, right? I was trying to think of someone who was basically giving some people permission to vote for Trump, who feel bad about voting for Trump. It’s a different case than Obama, but people who feel guilty about voting for Trump and are given permission. And in that sense, maybe it’s Trump’s running mate, which isn’t really an endorsement, but it’s like a sort of statement. I don’t know.
That’s why I, as you may recall, in a prior episode, said that picking Nikki Haley as his running mate and getting her to accept it would probably be the ultimate endorsement. What Biden really needs is someone to endorse him at his age. Dolly Parton endorsing Biden?
No, that’s —
OK.
No, you need —
Let me just say. Let me just say.
On the question of his age!
I don’t know if a Dolly Parton endorsement could matter. But a Dolly Parton figure — and now, you do say something interesting here. Dolly Parton is interesting as a celebrity because her universality is unchallenged in a way that Beyoncé‘s and Taylor Swift’s is not.
But precisely because she has so steadfastly kept herself out of politics, that if she were to enter the political fray, it would, I think, for some people, signal, oh, the stakes are so high that even Dolly Parton has had to break her covenant with herself about being political. I think it would ruin Dolly Parton for millions of people. And I can’t imagine her ever doing — everybody that I’ve ever talked to around her says it’s never going to happen. But OK, I will now maybe amend my vote, Lydia. I think a Dolly Parton —
There you go.
— could maybe not change the election because, again, I don’t think any celebrity could do that, but she could change the stakes of the election for some people.
Hm, interesting. OK, well, let’s leave it there. And when we come back, we’ll get Hot and Cold.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And finally, it’s time for “Hot, Cold,” where every week, one of us shares something we’re into, over, or somewhere in between. So, Tressie, you got one for us this week?
Oh, I am very hot on vitamin D.
Ooh.
I don’t want to come off sounding like Dr. Oz or anything, but vitamin D has changed my life.
How are you getting vitamin D?
I have to take — there is apparently a supplement you get a prescription for that is like an extremely high amount. So this is one of the benefits of social media, by the way. Someone on social media told me this. I asked my doctor, a doctor who has known I’m vitamin D deficient for years and had never mentioned it. And she goes, oh, yeah, I can do that. And so, I start taking this vitamin D supplement. All of a sudden, I think I’m a nicer, kinder person.
Impossible, but all right, sure.
Aw, thank you. And I am more energetic, and I’m sleeping better. And it has been amazing, how it has transformed my life. And if there was just an easier way to do it —
How long did it take?
It’s just been great.
Tell me, tell me.
I don’t think it was a couple of weeks, Michelle.
Wow.
I mean, it’s been the most impactful thing I’ve probably done for myself in a decade.
Oh, my goodness.
I’m all over that.
Wow.
Everybody has a vitamin D deficiency, apparently. Like, my kids have both been on those —
They say it’s so American.
— IV prescription things.
Just the winters in New England, I mean, you feel it when the sun starts to hit you again.
Women, people of color, Americans, everybody needs it.
Conservative newspaper columnist we all need.
That’s right. We all need it in our body.
All the major groups need vitamin D.
I love this, Tressie, because it just really has brought us all together. And ultimately, I feel like that’s your role in the world. You know? You bring us all together.
Oh, thank you.
Who could be against vitamin D? Now, vitamin C, on the other hand, that’s polarizing.
Ross, stop.
All right, well, I’m really glad that you came to visit with us today. Thank you.
Please come back again. Yes, definitely.
I will come back anytime, and I mean that. Thanks for having me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Thanks for joining us today. Give “Matter of Opinion” a follow on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a nice review while you’re there, so other people can find us and give the show a try.
“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett, and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and
The sociologist and New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom joins the hosts of “Matter of Opinion” this week to discuss the role of celebrity in politics. Could Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, with their tens of millions of fans, sway the presidential election? And beyond brand-name pop stars, what role does celebrity play within the political system?
Plus, Tressie goes a little “Dr. Oz” on us.
(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) and Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT).
“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Jordana Hochman. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion and is a host of the podcast “Matter of Opinion.” She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration.
@mcottle
Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times.
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