Celebrities: Is There Anything They Can't Do?

Over at The New Republic online Joshua Kurlantzick asks "Can Madonna save Malawi?" but what he actually does is look at the larger phenomenon of celebrities adopting a chosen country and saving it with a combination of treacly rhetoric, cheesy photo-ops and self-righteous indignation. The following excerpt gets at the gist of the piece:

Whether or not Madonna adopted the boy legally, her entire cultivation of Malawi shows how celebrity activism has changed. Used to be, there was only one type of celebrity do-gooder. The Jerry Lewis type--earnest, maybe annoyingly persistent, but using fame to raise consciousness about an issue, and then standing back and letting experts do the rest. Now, in an era when celebrities have become the new royalty, we have three types of famous do-gooders. The Jerry Lewis prototype still exists. We also now have a second type--celebs who take on worthy topics, but act so bizarrely they tarnish their noble causes. Say, Steven Segal, who adopted a noble cause (Tibet) and then had a monk declare the tough guy a reincarnation of a powerful Buddhist lama. Segal quickly assumed the name Terton Chungdrag Dorje--though not on film credits, of course--and supporters of the Tibet cause started wondering whether Segal had made donations to the monk to win his reincarnation.

Then there is the third kind, now proliferating faster than Iran. Savvy development experts long ago figured out that, by bringing celebs into a cause, they would raise the profile of unsexy topics like African development or debt relief. But now, like a bad horror movie, the monster has outgrown its master and is taking over. Celebrities now not only want to do good but think they know how to do the good, even as they decry politicians who dare offer advice about their world of film, television, and radio. So George Clooney appears before the U.N. Security Council to lecture the world on Darfur policy, as if he could convince hard-hearted Russia and China to support tougher measures against Khartoum. Bono, of course, has become such an expert on aid policy that he now merits magazine covers analyzing his insights and his potential impact on the world. Coldplay's Chris Martin studies up on the impact of tariffs on Ghanian textiles. And Madonna thinks that what desperate Malawi really needs is red string and teffilin.

The only quibble I have with his argument is that it discounts the possibility that at least some celebrity involvement might be both serious and legitimate and that the celebrity activist might be qualified to speak. I have long opposed the idea that celebrities ought to be preaching to us just because they are celebrities. But I am equally opposed to the idea that someone might be disqualified from being a serious and legitimate activist for one cause or other because they are celebrities. My case in point is always Bono, who for years has shown not only the base level commitment to the causes he advocates but also a willingness to engage those topics for an extended period of time, to work with experts, and to develop long-standing programs based not on grandstanding but on a serious commitment to helping foster change. Too many celebrities believe their righteous commitment to an idea or a cause is a sufficient (as opposed to a necessary) level of engagement to allow them to preach 9and condescend) to the rest of us.