Come on Y’all and Jump on the Bandwagon!

I’ve never been one for a celebrity endorsement, despite my undying love for all things revolving around that culture. I just don’t buy it (literally and figuratively).

Take for example Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice. These celebrities (and I do use this term loosely) have to go out into the streets of New York City, conduct specific weekly tasks, and whichever team makes the most money/offers the best service/makes a better ad campaign (you catch my drift) wins the the money raised to be donated to that week’s team manager. Alright; fine and dandy. But seriously, I highly, highly doubt people my age know who the majority of these so-called “celebrity” contestants are. If The Donald wanted star power, he should have considered someone a little higher in the celebrity alphabet ranking.

Now this is how you use star power to get a message across. Take Senator, and Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. This man has Oprah, the Kennedy family, and an array of brightly-eyed rising stars from Hollywood. However, thing just got a little bit more interesting.

While surfing my usual celebrity blog, I came across this post which showed this video:

First and foremost, I was pretty impressed with the video. It is simple, yet effective. Sure all Will.i.am did was take Obama’s speech and set it to song and found a bunch of people who support this candidate. But that’s not the point. The point it, this isn’t a video put out by Obama, it was put out by a musician. Obama is no way linked to this, other than having his words and image splashed across the screen while a group of celebrities look oh-so-fabulous in their attempts to sing. Scarlett Johansson anyone?

So here is the best part; because Obama isn’t backing this video, he is getting free publicity, and any publicity is good publicity, am I right?

Here is the bad part. People in today’s society are lazy, and if they see a celebrity promoting or endorsing something, he or she will think everything is OK because of that familiar face. Now, in a situation like this, that way of thinking is extremely dangerous. The presidential candidates are just that, people wanting to be the president of the most powerful countries in the world. (Personally) I think it isn’t wise to have all those faces behind a campaign. It is almost like going back to high school and being the unpopular kid that everything says smells like grilled cheese sandwiches; that kid isn’t going to have friends to stick up for him or her. However, the cool kids have friends, and lots of them. They go through life with the comfort and support of knowing how awesome they are, and along the way, get more and more friends to add to their collection.

Does it make sense now? The presidential campaign has gotten out of hand. Here is what I don’t understand; why can’t the candidates get their messages across on their own and without the need of celebrity backing? It would be more admirable and it would make all those lazy voters wake up and listen to the person who is about to run their country.

I don’t recall any Canadian political campaigns rounding up Bryan Adams or God forbid, Avril Lavigne to back Steven Harper or Paul Martin when they went head-to-head. However, I do recall being told to exercise my right to vote by everyone under the sun, celebrity or otherwise. Sure the Vote or Die campaign was good in thought, but did it work? No. The T-shirts were a great gimmick. The celebrities were a great gimmick, but nothing worked. Do you know why? Because Paris Hilton, “forgot to vote”.

 

Picture Source: Jezebel.com