Scotland on Sunday - Mixing pop and politics

Scotland on Sunday - Mixing pop and politics: "The Ronstadt Vegas Rumble comes just days after Elton John complained that American singers were under pressure to avoid making political remarks, and a few weeks after Neil Young grumbled that political songs were being neutered. Whoopi Goldberg was also dropped as a spokesperson for a diet drink, but it�s debatable whether this was because she mocked Bush during a fundraiser or because she is very annoying, the human equivalent of chewing tinfoil with a mouthful of amalgam fillings.

Still, this is bound to raise the question of celebrities getting involved with politics once more, followed by the tired old invocation of early firebrand activists such as Jane Fonda, whose Christmas visit to North Vietnam in 1972 and condemnation of the American war effort earned her the sobriquet of Hanoi Jane.

Warren Beatty funded and advised the McGovern campaign, and Marlon Brando hung out with AIM and the Black Panthers. Yet no one mentions the agitprop of Paul Hardcastle's "19", a hit single in which he worried about the draft, even though he lived near Cheam and the war had ended more than a decade before.

Surely no one in the real world takes celebrity activists terribly seriously? Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are both longstanding, earnest political campaigners on a range of thorny issues including, of course, the war. And yet, to date, the backlash against their views has amounted to being disinvited to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Surely no one takes celebrity activists terribly seriously


Last year Tim had a starring role and an Oscar nomination for Mystic River, directed by arch-Republican Clint Eastwood. There are actors who would give away back teeth for this kind of disapprobation. "


SIOBHAN SYNNOT
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