Clooney Rails About Prop. 8

File this one under the heading of: Who Gives a Shit?

Note to celebrities: Shut the fuck up. Nobody who matters seriously cares what you think. Yes, you are citizens and thus have the right to voice your opinion on political matters. However, just because you have an auspicious pulpit from which to speak, does not mean that what you have to say carries any weight or validity. I've written about this before:

May 13, 2007
So, I heard Green Day's latest "Working Class Hero" about a week or two ago. Didn't listen to the lyrics until this past Thursday. What kind of egalitarian, populist crap is this? I'd say they took about as much risk as Toby Keith when he wrote/sang "American Way" after the September 11th attacks. And let's be honest here, Green Day sold out the year the Expos got hosed, but still. Then I learned that it's a cover of the song written by John "Karl Marx" Lennon. Too bad Lennon didn't live long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Union. Too bad he didn't listen to any reputable economists.

This is an unfortunate side-effect of a free society. We allow entertainers to achieve stratospheric levels of celebrity and status. Long enough in the public eye, they start to become politically "active." We listen to the misguided policies they tout and falsely assume the talents that have made them popular to be testiment to their regulatory acumen.

Inequality and turbulence are a small price to pay for material progress. Like Joseph Schumpeter, one of the most accomplished and honored economists in history notes, "The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens, but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

Who are factory girls if not working-class? Capitalism benefits those on the lower rungs of society.

*For the record, I am pro-Gay rights. There is no reason people should be restricted in declaring whom their benefits should go to. This is a flat-out violation of Equal Protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. If marriage is a religious institution, then I'm okay with those institutions defining it however they wish. However, the benefits afforded to same-sex couples should not differ from their hetero-counterparts. And if marriage is a legal institution it cannot be narrowly defined.