The Orbis

Issue date: 4/19/07 Section: Issues

Rosie O'Donnell is a talk show celebrity who has vocally opposed gun control and received criticism for her perceived hypocrisy.

When celebrities take it upon themselves to become representatives for particular causes or political standpoints, the best objective for them to pursue is to bring awareness to that issue by using their status as a public figure to direct attention toward that cause. Having a celebrity, or any singular, recognizable figure for that matter, become the face of a cause, be it global poverty, the AIDS crisis, voter registration efforts or the genocide in Sudan, leads issues to be viewed as matters attached to an individual's personal life and makes that issue as vulnerable to changes in public sentiment as the celebrities themselves.

Bill O'Reilly, for example, knocks down "liberal Hollywood" - rich, chic celebrities that have nothing to do with politics - and by knocking down these individuals he can also give his viewers the impression that the issues they tied themselves to are also undeserving of attention. Take Rosie O'Donnell, for example, who is perhaps Fox News' favorite celebrity target since she began her stint as a co-host of ABC's "The View." O'Donnell became an outspoken advocate for strenuous gun control laws a few years ago. But when journalists revealed that her own bodyguard carried a concealed weapon to protect her, critics immediately jumped on her hypocrisy - how dare she demand strict enforcement of gun control when she herself relies on the legality of concealed weapons? What this particular incident makes clear is while celebrity endorsement may be a great, simple way to draw massive attention to an issue, attaching an issue to a certain public figure makes that issue as vulnerable as the celebrity is. One person's perceived hypocrisy distracted from and silenced the heart of the gun-control debate.

Of course, the hope is that the occurrence of celebrities living lifestyles that directly contradict the messages they promote is rare. But even beyond that easy fodder for criticism as a potential vulnerability of celebrity representatives, us the fact that our nation's view of most celebrities is itself fickle and quite often hostile without substantial reason. How easily do we become uninterested or even annoyed by a certain cause because an individual we might not like is attached to that cause?

Celebrities with less than exemplary personal lives or who are not particularly well-received by the public detract from the issue or cause at hand, and then their celebrity status becomes detrimental rather than helpful. Ideally, it seems most beneficial to activists to have spokespeople with legitimate ties to their cause who have low risks of getting bad press.

It is admirable that celebrities recognize the power they have to make Americans aware of problems or issues that concern us all and might not already be receiving adequate attention; but with that power to highlight an issue comes a great vulnerability to taint an issue in the public eye, and for that reason, activists should put great thought into who they want promoting their causes and how prominent they want them to become in that promotion.

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