Welcome to the age of sleb politics

14 August 2010

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Once, pop stars and actors were content with vast riches and public adulation. Now celebrities want to run countries. Rod Liddle despairs of the new world order in which Wyclef Jean wants to be President of Haiti and Bono is taken seriously

Is the hip hop artist Wyclef Jean the right sort of person to run Haiti? He has announced that he will run for the country’s presidential election as the candidate of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) party. Wyclef is wanted in the United States, where he made his fortune, on tax avoidance issues. The IRS is claiming $2.1 million in back taxes from him. Added to that there are allegations that he salted away an estimated $400,000 from a charity he set up to, er, relieve the suffering in Haiti following the earthquake which struck the benighted country in January this year.

In fact ‘salted away’ is not the technical term — ‘mishandled’ is the technical term. So things are looking pretty good for him then, given the precedents in Hispaniola. Most former presidents of the world’s first free black republic have owed large amounts of money to the US and defrauded their own people, so Wyclef Jean is pursuing an admirably traditionalist line. Also, he has started to refer to himself, when talking to the press, in the third person, which is often early evidence of a psychopathic personality type and always evidence of monumental arrogance and delusions of grandeur.

This is crucial. If he is to gain the sort of support he needs to eventually rule Haiti, he will need to be a bona fide psychopath, like the Duvaliers. Also, just as a tip, I suggest Wyclef marries a goat. One of Haiti’s most respected former presidents, François Antoine Simon, had a daughter who married a goat called Simalo. Simalo was also a close confidante of the president. This daughter, Celestina, later divorced Simalo acrimoniously and the poor goat was subsequently bumped off by shadowy agents. But François made sure Simalo was buried with full honours in a proper coffin. He really loved that goat. His son-in-law. Celestina later became revered in her home nation as a ‘black Joan of Arc’. This all happened just 100 years ago, by the way, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I think Wyclef should marry a goat, to help him along. A nanny goat, obviously. You don’t want people thinking Wyclef’s a poof. They’re very macho out there.

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Keith Clouston

August 14th, 2010 10:37am Report this comment

Dear Rod, in the 1990s I toured extensively in Europe as a musician working with a certain female world music singer. We ended up having a French top 20 hit in 1999, at which point said singer, whose personality was becoming increasingly 'diva'ish,not least because she was now sought after by the French press for her vacuous opinions on multiculturalism, the Middle East etc was approached to become a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN. We in her band found this hilarious as she had created nothing but ill-will in her own backing band and at the end of her most successful and lucrative tour half of us left. Our singer became a UN Goodwill Ambassador shortly afterwards.

Zomby

August 19th, 2010 10:49am Report this comment

Great article! Plenty more examples. Of all the appalling decisions made by the last government, the one that really sticks out was when, in 2009 and already deep in the broon stuff, they reckoned they should do their bit for businesses and said why don't we get that Suralan, he's a business sort of a bloke isn't he?, why don't we make him a tsar?

Wouldn't happen to the new lot of course, they sensibly went for that well known authority on public sector budgeting, Philip Green.

All credit to Blair, he did throw a party for his favourite slebs, but at least he didn't suggest they knew how to run the country.

Yam Yam

August 19th, 2010 12:43pm Report this comment

What? No mention of the original and the greatest 'sleb' politicians of them all - Eva Peron?

Oedipus Rex

August 19th, 2010 11:22pm Report this comment

Given that it seems some of these slebs involvement is also a means to maybe revive a flagging career with accompanying withdrawal from the limelight symptoms, we could 'play conspiracy theorist' and ask - Cui Bono? (If you get my point)

A. MacAulay

August 22nd, 2010 8:21am Report this comment

Do start one of your competitions in which pols and slebs are paired up like Sarkozy and Bruni. Like, say a Milliband, any one will do, married to Lilly Allen. Or Harperson and Brian Ferry. Could be satisfyingly macabre.

John Costello

August 22nd, 2010 10:41pm Report this comment

Ronald Reagan was not a B movie actor who had not been seen by the general public for 20 years before he was elected. Check out his career on IMDB.COM. In thye 1950s he had become President of the Screen Actor's
Guild, become employed as a spokesman for GE, and ws host and often star of GE Theater, a weekly TV seen by at least 1/3rd of America's TV viewing public every week. His prestige in Hollywood was enough to lure A-List movie stars to the anthology series (Check out the cast lists for the individual episodes on imdb) and was sufficiently politically formidable that the Kennedys brought anti-trust charges against GE to "suggest" the company take its very popular, very conservative spokesman off the air. Reagan's revenge was to go into politics, where he accomplished far more than either Jack or Bobby.