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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Celebrity influence |
| 2008-09-09 |
| Gregg Easterbrook, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" TMQ liked "Iron Man," which was a well-done movie with a nice sense of humor until a formulaic final reel. . . . Actor Robert Downey Jr., who starred in the movie, was named to the most recent "Time 100," purporting to present the world's 100 most influential people. Note to Time editors -- Downey cannot actually fly or fire repulsor beams at terrorists. That was a movie! Hollywood types are paid huge amounts of money, and like to imagine the money is proof of their importance; newsmags go along with this pretense in order to win access to celebrities. I would argue that no one from the entertainment realm who was listed among the globe's 100 most influential people by Time -- Downey, Miley Cyrus, Mariah Carey, the Coen brothers -- has any influence on world events. What has any entertainment figure in the 2008 Time 100 actually accomplished, other than personal self-promotion? |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 Influential could mean influencing minds, not actions. If one convinced all the hippies that war was bad you are influential (literally influencing their opinions) even if you never stopped the war in the process (never influenced the right opinions). |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-09-09 14:20 |
| #4 If he's so damned influential, have him call Sudan or Zimbabwe and straighten those guys out. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-09-09 12:59 |
| #3 I guess they have a bunch of money to throw at politicians, but do they ever really do what you want them to, and what they promise, in the end? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-09-09 12:57 |
| #2 I guess it's softpower rather than hardpower. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-09-09 12:35 |
| #1 I think Easterbrook misses the point. The massive success of Iron Man means millions of people were exposed to the themes of the movie and the trickle down economic effects from movie tickets to Happy Meal tie-ins and toys put the effect far above anybody other than a world leader of a major country. The catch is that influence is fleeting and barely controllable for political purposes. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-09-09 12:34 |