By Samuel Clench
Copyright news
Oh dear. The celebrities got political again.
Javier Bardem was perhaps the most prominent example, today, of actors speaking out at the Emmy Awards. He denounced what he called the “genocide in Gaza”.
But our more strikingly eloquent culprit was Hannah Einbinder, who won the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Hacks.
Great show, by most accounts. I’ve not seen it, so I’ll stop short of a recommendation.
“Go Birds, f*** ICE, and free Palestine,” Ms Einbinder said at the end of her acceptance speech. The “go Birds” thing is about an NFL team, so we shan’t worry about it here, though I would question Ms Einbinder’s taste at great length given the time.
As for the other parts, Ms Einbinder was expressing her opposition to the actions of both America’s immigration enforcement agency and of Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians who still live in Gaza. Should “live” be in quotation marks, there? Feels that way.
“I though it was important to talk about Palestine, because it’s an issue that is very dear to my heart,” Ms Einbinder said.
“I have friends in Gaza who are working as frontline workers, as doctors right now, to provide care for pregnant women and for schoolchildren.
“I feel like it is my obligation, as a Jewish person, to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel, because our religion and our culture is such an important, longstanding institution that is really separate to this sort of ethno-nationalist state.
“Boycotting is an effective tool to create pressure on the powers that be to meet the moment.”
Ms Einbinder wore an “Artists4Ceasefire” pin on her outfit, along with White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood and several other actors.
You’re free to think that Ms Einbinder was being vacuous, or just wrong. That’s fine. My actual problem is with folks who think it was outrageous for her to express her opinion at all, a stance that inevitably pops up after these award shows, every single time.
“Millionaire celebs love shouting empty slogans on stage like it’s open mic night,” said Hen Mazzig, for example, an Israeli activist and writer.
“Hannah, you had 30 seconds to inspire millions. You could have called for peace, condemned terror, called for the release of the hostages, opposed the sexual atrocities and rape committed by Hamas and shown empathy for all victims.
“Instead, you went for applause lines.”
He added, sarcastically, that “you sure look chic in this expensive dress!”.
I’ll acknowledge that it’s annoying to hear rich people, who have faced barely any hardship in their lives and have little experience of the real world, lecture us about politics.
You may feel the same way. In which case, you should be positively apoplectic every time billionaire real estate heir, and daddy’s favourite son, turned reality TV host Donald Trump opens his mouth.
One standard for every person, please. You cannot rage at two-bit celebrities for talking about politics and then worship one of them when they decide they’d like to become president.
I’ll say that again, for emphasis: before he entered politics in the mid-2010s, most people knew Donald Trump as the host of The Apprentice, a job which involved him pretending to fire people from pretend jobs.
You fully support that guy having the nuclear codes, but you get pissy when the lady from Hacks dares to talk about ICE? Come on. At least try to be consistent.
I guarantee you are not going to see the same outrage, from these folks, towards someone like the Australian actress and singer Holly Valance, whose song Kiss Kiss was an earworm for me at some confusing point in my childhood.
Did she make any other songs? I honestly have no idea. It doesn’t matter.
On the same day Ms Einbinder was being so mouthy at the Emmys, Ms Valance, who is married to a political hack representing Britain’s right-wing Reform party, expressed support for the convicted criminal, and specialist in racial inflammation, Tommy Robinson.
“I’m very proud and pleased for Tommy, this is his redemption,” Ms Valance said after a weekend that saw neo-Nazis march proudly through London.
Fun fact about “Tommy”: his actual name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon. Doesn’t really suit the vibe he’s going for though, does it? So he invented a different name, worthy of a race warrior. That’s the sort of cynical charlatan we’re dealing with, here.
“How the man screaming from the rooftops about the rape and violence of white British girls was framed as ‘the bad guy’ is going to be a case study for sociology for years to come,” said Ms Valance.
“How weak and immoral we have become. Our silence is immoral.”
Robinson, as he prefers to be called, is a loathsome human being. Ms Valance was expressing opinions I would generously call naive. But I’m not about to say that she should shut up. That would be completely ridiculous and hypocritical.
The point is this, and it applies to all awards shows going forward: why shouldn’t actors express their political opinions? Why shouldn’t athletes do the same, for that matter?
Why should I, with no special expertise in anything other than the correct use of the subjunctive, have a greater right to express myself than someone who acts for a living, or throws a football or whatever?
Why do you, as a plumber, or a teacher, or a nurse, or a businesswoman, get to spout off however you like, while people who star in films have to shut their mouths?
How is it that we’ve come to believe it’s perfectly reasonable for a self-absorbed tech CEO like, say, Elon Musk, to wield a historically unparalleled level of influence over politics, while also saying it’s outrageous for other celebrities to speak about politics at all?
There’s a condescending, patronising double standard here. The critics are fast becoming more tiresome than the celebrity virtue-signalling that triggered all this in the first place.
