Celebrity Opinion

In todays age of mass social media, we have access to the thoughts of all and sundry at any time of day and night, usually unfiltered and uneducated. Mostly, this isn’t too much of a problem, we walk (or scroll) on by without giving random opinions a second thought, but when it comes to celebrities, we hold them to this odd standard of not allowing them to be anything but a celebrity unless it suits our narrative.

I recently saw a tweet aimed at Osher Gunsberg which started with “you’re a reality TV star” indicating that he should have stuck to the one thing the tweeter knew him for, but it was his very tongue in cheek reply stating that he would “from now on only be the one thing you allow me to be. Didn’t realise … that humans were not allowed to have multiple interests or skill sets” that got me thinking about celebrity and the disdain society seems to have for them if they express and opinion, no matter how educated that person might be about the subject matter.

Osher, for those who bother to look into the person behind the celebrity, has long had an interest in the environment and climate change, and has spoken to and engaged with many experts on the subject. He’s not a celebrity dropped in for an endorsement, never to be heard on the topic again. He is passionate about it and tries to educate himself.

We see this idea of celebrity shut downs when it comes to politics, especially. In Australia, we have compulsory voting so it’s not such an issue, but you notice it to a great extent with American politics. Celebrity endorsement is used to get people to vote for one party or another, one candidate or another, but in expressing an opinion they open themselves up to a barrage of hateful posts on every social media platform known to man, and this can have a detrimental effect.

The idea of hounding or insulting celebrities for having an opinion seems bizarre to me. You can attack the idea but the actual person should really be off limits. Clearly, there are going to be cases where the particular celebrity just spouts utter nonsense on an ongoing basis, but for the most part, they’re just regular people with regular opinions, they just happen to have a massive audience.

Celebrities are also subjected to criticism when they talk about things which have personally affected them. During the bushfires which devastated large tracts of land in Australia during the latter part of 2019 and early 2020, Russell Crowe’s property suffered much damage. Naturally, he used social media to thank the fire fighters and was berated for seemingly using his celebrity status to get his house saved, yet he had done nothing of the sort, and had, in fact, had his land used as a staging ground by the fire brigade to give them better access to other properties.

The trouble with social media is that it doesn’t give the celebrity in question ability to show the depth and breadth of their knowledge of or passion about certain subjects. If you saw a social media post from singer/songwriter Charlotte Church about physics you might scoff but if you listen to her on the podcast The Infinite Monkey Cage episode “Universe: What Remains to be Discovered” (02/08/16) you come to understand just how much she knows about science and just how much excitement she finds in the subject.

As Charlotte says in the episode, she doesn’t need to have formally studied science in order to learn about it. There are books, and podcasts, and documentaries that you can learn from. You don’t need to study astrophysics for years at university to have a love for the science behind it. Personally, I have spent many an hour listing to science and history podcasts because, even though I don’t always understand it fully, I can appreciate the expertise, I can increase my knowledge of the subject and find people who do understand the subject for me to follow up and read their works at a later stage. And it was Charlotte's absolute giddy excitement that inspired me to write this piece.

So, if you gain nothing else from this piece, please allow celebrities to speak their mind. You can agree or disagree with their position until the cows come home, but attack the idea not the person. As we tell kids in sport, play the ball, not the man. And, who knows, maybe you'll learn something from them.

Balance

Does everyone deserve an equal voice, even if they’re wrong?


We see it all the time, but especially when an election is coming up: the idea of balance in reporting, that both sides get an equal stake in the air time or print media to put forward their views and that one side is not unfairly left out of the process.


But sometimes, we see it when an incident has happened and you just know that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, but the media will give just as much air time to the wrong answer as if it’s just as deserving of the attention as the right answer.


Ok, this can be subjective, and some people might agree with what I perceive as the wrong answer. I’m not by any stretch saying that I am the arbiter of right and wrong. It’s just that, well, sometimes, it’s obvious.


Take medical breakthroughs, for example. This most often occurs when vaccines are made or new medications are being trialled. The journalists will report on the story, because we (the public) like to know what’s going on in the world, especially if it’s going to affect us or someone we know. The trouble comes when they give a pseudoscience practitioner air time as if they are just as credentialled as the doctors who have just spent many years developing the medical breakthrough in question.


I would like to see journalists, if they insist of talking to every crackpot with a conspiracy theory, actually take them to task over their claims. If they complain about the level of scary sounding things in vaccines, like formaldehyde, ask them if they’re aware that there is a significantly higher amount of it in fruit (in that particular case) and don’t let them off with just spouting their own agenda without asking them to back up their claims, just like the scientists and doctors have to.


Another example is the recent protests in America over reopening certain states prior to case numbers falling, or a vaccine being available. They’re no protesting against reopening the state. They’re protesting for it. One woman stood, face covered so she couldn’t be identified, with a placard that read “Sacrifice the Weak” and it turned my stomach. But people like her are not only being photographed, they’re being interviewed on local, state, national and international broadcasts as if their opinion that we should let the old, the infirm, the disabled and the immunocompromised die is as valid as the vast majority of people who are crying out for people to stay at home and maintain social distancing methods in the midst of a global pandemic.


In the modern world there is little excuse for ignorance if you live in a developed nation. I will end this piece with a quote that sums up this whole problem, by Isaac Asimov (American writer and professor of biochemistry):

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'