How many times have you heard Alyssa Milano, Alec Baldwin, or Chelsea Handler wax poetic in the name of the #Resistance over the past two years? Milano crashed the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Baldwin regularly trashed President Trump, and Handler went as far to claim that she ditched her Netflix show to focus on “activism” (though in reality, low ratings were likely to blame).
The Trump era has transformed all of Hollywood into a political army. Even Harvey Weinstein strode in the Women’s March at Sundance, mere months before journalists revealed that the festival had been his playground for decades to prey on women. But of all the woke celebrities claiming meltdowns and fury, only one has turned pain into power, and she’s the one the town won’t stop mocking.
In 2007, Kim Kardashian was viewed by her Calabasas, Calif., contemporaries as little more than a joke, Paris Hilton’s stylist who had a private sex tape leaked without her consent. She spent the next decade reviled for being “famous for being famous.” Today, she’s negotiating with the leader of the free world to release unfairly punished prisoners from incarceration.
In a normal world, I’d be hesitant to endorse celebrities inserting themselves into politics at all, but our president is a celebrity himself, and Kardashian has gone above and beyond qualifying herself for a seat at the table.
For one thing, appeals to pathos from star power work on Trump. The president has long engaged in personal politics, and he’s uniquely susceptible to being swayed by celebrity. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s a real one, and the most woke activists in Hollywood have failed to lift a finger to attempt to take advantage of it.
Kardashian not only went on offense, but she also took on all the factors necessary for celebrity activism to be both effective and a net positive. First of all, she chose a highly specific topic, settling on seeking the commutation of Alice Marie Johnson as her initial cause. Then, she got smart, immersing herself in the minutiae of criminal law and justice. Finally, she focused on appealing to Trump specifically.
Don’t take my word for it; just listen to CNN host and former Obama staffer Van Jones.
Jones described Kardashian’s role in the Johnson negotiations to Vogue for their cover story of the star:
Kardashian, who openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has expressed support for tighter gun control laws, isn’t spending her celebrity capital on screaming about assault rifle laws she doesn’t understand or pulling petty stunts to prove how much she hates the president. Instead, she’s modeled how to turn celebrity power into not just brute force, but calculated and intelligent progress.
She’s now studying to become an attorney, taking advantage of California law which allows non-law school or even non-college graduates to receive their law licenses after apprenticing and then taking the bar, which she hopes to pass by 2022.
Like most turns in her career, her announcement was met with equal parts mockery and obsessive attention. Like most turns in her career, I predict she’ll have the last laugh in the end.
