There are many good reasons to never listen to celebrities banging on about politics. For a start, they’re almost always terrified sheep: the shadow of cancel culture is ever but a tweet away, and every sleb is more than aware that their entire career hangs on studiously following The Current Thing.
Another good reason is that they’re almost always stunningly ignorant. These are people who live in the most rarified bubble since Louis XIV held court at Versailles. Even more than the Sun King, they are surrounded by sycophants and toadies whose livelihood depends on never, ever telling their employers what ignorant fools they really are. Finally, like most fundamentally insecure people (slebs know perfectly well that there are a million wannabes, every bit as talented and good-looking as they are — success is as much, even more, pure luck in Hollywood as talent), they over-compensate with an outward persona of astonishing arrogance.
The result is that your average celebrity is conformist, uninformed, and un-self-aware to a fault. And they can’t shut their ridiculously overpaid gobs, even when their toadies beg them not to.
The “yes” campaign for the voice to parliament referendum has in recent days reportedly issued a “don’t help us” directive to supportive celebrities – going back on a previously proposed marketing pitch to rally Australians closer to the date of the vote.
The reported thinking behind this unexpected about-face by the yes camp is that Australians perversely don’t like being preached to by opinionated media personalities on big issues.
“Perversely”? Wisely, is more accurate. The disconnect of the media elite is so thorough that they actually think we hoi polloi need their uninformed opinions.
You don’t need me to tell you that the slebs are turning a deaf ear.
Hot on the heels of the change of tack from the yes campaign, newsreaders and film stars were still taking to high-profile forums to plead with voters to back the voice. And their messages were remarkably similar: that a “no” vote could be damaging for Australia.
The first sign that celebrity advocates for the voice wouldn’t be silenced – apparently oblivious to the changed thinking of the yes camp – came on Monday night on the ABC’s 7.30, when global Aussie film star Cate Blanchett made a passionate plea to undecided voters, saying it would be a “sad moment if we missed this opportunity” […]
Blanchett wasn’t the only high-profile figure to emerge in the media last week. On Wednesday, Brooke Boney, the Indigenous newsreader for Nine’s Today show, moved well beyond her regular stomping ground of breakfast TV to lay out to prospective no voters the gravity of opposing the voice.
Early on in an opinion piece she posted to the Nine website, Boney claimed that “as a journalist, I’ve kept my thoughts private” on the referendum.
And pigs have grown wings and taken to the skies.
But the Yes 23 campaign’s new-found direction of talking to the ordinary Australian in the street apparently has some odd ideas of which streets one might find ordinary Australians in.
Diary’s UK spies have reported that Yes 23 campaign advocates were up and about near, of all places, the members’ entrance of Lord’s for the entire five days of the second Ashes test.
The Australian
Ah, yes, the one place you’re guaranteed to find an average Aussie is at the $85,000 per membership MCC.
Meanwhile, back where real Australians, including an extremely high percentage of Aboriginal Australians, live…
Federal MP Rick Wilson believes opposition to the Indigenous voice to parliament is as high as 80 per cent in his vast West Australian electorate.
The Liberal member for the farming and mining electorate of O’Connor has revealed the results of his recent survey of residents as Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney prepares for two days of campaigning there.
In Mr Wilson’s email survey of 1487 people in his electorate in the last week of June, 80.1 per cent said they would vote No to the voice and 19.9 per cent said they would vote Yes.
The Australian
Sure, this isn’t an “official” poll, but it’s a fair indication that when Burney swans into the seat’s remote communities in her best Gucci outfits and dripping with pearls, she’s not likely to be winning the hearts and minds of the red dust folk — if she ever bothers sullying her eyes with the sight of the great unwashed, anyway.