Movie and TV stars are widely assumed to be on the Left, but I don’t think there’s much evidence for that lately.
Here’s the Forbes list of highest paid celebrities for 2018. Among the 12 movie and TV stars on the list, George Clooney is #1 for selling his tequila company, but I don’t think he makes all that much on movies lately, not that he isn’t extremely good at being a movie star.
I don’t watch much TV lately, but in the 2000s, Clooney was the best talk show guest at promoting his movies since Robin Williams in the 1990s. Clooney, though, has largely disappeared from acting in recent years, although he is slated to reappear in his upcoming Catch-22 miniseries in a couple of weeks on Hulu, so expect a talk show blitzkrieg soon.
But check out the next 11. The Rock (Duane Johnson) is #2, Robert Downey Jr. #3, Chris Hemsworth (“Thor”) #4, Jerry Seinfeld #5, Jackie Chan #6, Sofia Vergara #7, Will Smith #8, Scarlett Johansson #9, Bollywood star and PM Modi supporter Ashkay Kumar #10, Adam Sandler #11, and Dave Chappelle is #12.
George Clooney is a conventional liberal while Jackie Chan is slightly to the right of First Emperor Chin Shi Huang-Ti. I’d guesstimate the most of the rest of the top 12 are closer to Jackie than George.
The Rock is a former U. of Miami football player and WWE wrestler, Downey is a close friend of Mel Gibson and Jody Foster and he’s definitely the coolest person who has ever said “Hello” to me; I don’t know anything about Hemsworth but he plays Thor and he’s quite funny; Seinfeld is a friend of Larry David; Sofia …; the only time I saw Will Smith was at my local driving range; Scarlett is an ardent Zionist; Kumar is a big supporter of Hindu Nationalist PM Narendra Modi; Sandler is obviously a GOP Zionist; and Chappelle might be one inch to the left of Chris Rock.
So that’s one standard Hollywood liberal and close to 11 actors who aren’t all that forthcoming about their politics.
Clooney is incredibly rich, but, on the whole, I get the feeling that being a real hard-ass about contract negotiations is not a leftist trait. For example, here’s a lovely 1992 video of an all-star rock concert rendition of Bob Dylan’s great 1964 song “My Back Pages,” in which Dylan apologized for his previous conventional leftist protest folk songs:
How many of the white male rock legends on this video — Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan — were big fans of higher taxes?
Probably not Clapton, who currently lives next to Jack Nicklaus’s magnificent Muirfield Hills golf club outside Columbus, OH.
Tom Petty, for instance, was a beloved rock star, perhaps my favorite, but the more I think about his career, the more I notice that he could be a bastard about getting paid. He was always suing somebody or other.
In contrast, Sixties leftist icon Joan Baez was Steve Jobs’ girlfriend for a few years in the 1980s. But Baez is a genuine leftist idealist, so she is kind of broke most of the time.. Jobs would tell her, “I’ve found the perfect dress for you” and drive her to the Stanford shopping mall. And, being Steve Jobs, it would be the perfect dress for her. As Sir Jonny Ive pointed out in frustration about his boss, Jobs wasn’t some insensitive autistic sperg. Jobs was tremendously sensitive to personality and aesthetics. So, when he was brutal to people around him, they tended to take it seriously.
But the perfect dress’s price tag would say it cost $1,975, while Steve would suddenly go off to buy some bespoke shirts for himself. So Joan would make excuses to the sale clerk for not buying it. Then Steve would come back with his superb shirts and be disappointed she hadn’t bought the perfect dress for herself.
Not surprisingly, they broke up after a few years.
In contrast, how much, for example, will Robert Downey Jr. make off the latest Avengers movie? It’s widely assumed (although not undisputed) that he made $75 million off the previous Avengers Marvel movie, so 9 figures doesn’t seem out of reach for this one, which has passed $500 million domestically through 9 days, and might challenge the unprecedented billion dollar mark domestically and the 3 billion dollars worldwide.
If you want to contribute a couple of pennies to the Joan Baez retirement fund, here is her sensational Dylan knock0ff original composition from 1975:
