I promise this is not political, but I did come to write it from a direct reaction someone had to our most recent election, and something I can’t help but applaud.
I just read that Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi actually left the US to make their home in South West England, in the Cotswolds actually (a fantastically lush country area that I have been to and can surely attest is beautiful). It’s not that I care a donkey’s dingus for what DeGeneres or de Rossie (I never noticed, probably because they are spelled differently, but they both have a “De” in their last names…interesting, huh?) does, as they surely don’t care about anything I do. Really, we just aren’t that close anymore. It’s just that I applaud them for seeing their convictions through and putting their mortgage where their mouth is. And unlike so many other celebrities who said they would leave when Trump was elected, they did.
Good for them.
Let’s call out some of the others.
Cher once said she would try to leave the planet if Trump became president. But more down to Earth in 2023, she doubled down about leaving, claiming she developed health problems the last time around with Trump in office.
So far, she is sticking around.
When ruminating about a second Trump presidency, Sharon Stone told the Mail Online, “I am certainly considering a house in Italy.” Has she stored up on her pasta yet?
Barbara Streisand doesn’t seem to need all people, certainly not Donal Trump. Discussing a second Trump presidency, she told Stephen Colbert late last year, “I can’t live in this country if he becomes president.”
Where’s her ticket?
Whoopi Goldberg said she’d exile herself in 2016, but ultimately did not leave. She’s still leading the hens on The View, claiming she still needs her paycheck.
Miley Cyrus, Bryan Cranston, Lena Dunham, and Samuel L Jackson also said they’d go.
Again, this rant has nothing to do with politics. What it does have to do with is the hubris of celebrities thinking that anybody cares about their pronouncements or even their candidate endorsements. For me, the cult of the famous in this country has become a worsening epidemic over the past decade, surely propagated by social media and our digital news cycle (not that anything we see or hear these days can be considered news, really); these people really think it matters what they say or do beyond that which they get paid handsomely to do, which is, mostly, to entertain us. And I know, unlike Ellen, probably most of them won’t go.
I just love when I can sit back and watch the hypocrisies unfold.
