Welcome to the age of sleb politics

14 August 2010

/article_images/articledir_12402/6201093/1_listing.png

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

In the middle of December 1970, the US president Richard Nixon received a letter from the country’s most iconic superstar, Elvis Presley, who asked if he might become a ‘Federal Agent at Large’, dedicated to combating drug abuse and youthful anti-American activity among all those unwashed long-haired hippies in the universities, all those people causing lots of trouble. Nixon, eviscerated by young voters on account of both the Vietnam War and the distinct whiff of authoritarianism emanating from his administration, could not resist, and invited Elvis, secretly, to the White House.

The key here is the word ‘secretly’. Because there it ended, with this backwoods redneck borderline educationally subnormal singer, now well into his bloated Las Vegas drug-addicted pomp, handing over the gift of a facsimile Colt 45 pistol to the bemused president and Tricky Dicky nervously and sensibly wishing him well. Nixon did ask Presley if he had ever shagged Marilyn Monroe and the singer sadly demurred; you needed even more than Presley had to shag Monroe, as Arthur Miller might have testified.

And that was it. No position in the administration for Elvis, no Federal Agent at Large idiocy. Today, though, Presley would be the US Drugs Czar and the next president in waiting, relentlessly indulged by the press and public, with his own think-tank and trips abroad to meet the leaders of lesser nations.

I suppose they started being taken seriously in 1985, the slebs, with the farrago of Live Aid. A few years before this, the Conservative party had held a repulsive rally in which, for the first time, the very rich slebs of the day were pre-eminent, trotting out onto the stage and pledging themselves to Maggie. The hugely forgettable saccharine crooner Vince Hill, Lulu, the snooker player Steve Davies, that strange bloke called Errol from Hot Chocolate. But one suspects that even then this put more people off voting Tory than persuaded them to do so.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Next page

More articles from: Rod Liddle | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (7)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

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.