Another group of celebrities has released a video urging Americans to vote, but at least this time the group isn’t as blatantly partisan.
The video includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Olivia Wilde, Rami Malek, Samuel L. Jackson and many more celebrities, all telling Americans to “Vote your future.”
“What do you care about?” several celebrities ask at the beginning of the video, before they begin listing off their pet issues. Some are obviously liberal, like gun control. Rose McGowan says her issue is “equal pay for women” (I don’t know how many times I need to explain that the “wage” gap is due to different life choices and not discrimination).
Others are not that partisan, like education.
Here’s the thing about this video compared to the one directed solely by Joss Whedon (he had a hand in this project as well): it’s not hyper-partisan and it doesn’t tell the viewers who not to vote for. In a video release at the end of September, a bunch of celebrities who have appeared in Whedon projects got together to implore people not to vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump. Don Cheadle even calls him “racist, abusive coward.”
It’s pretty clear where most of the celebrities in this video stand, but they at least don’t tell people how to vote. In fact, toward the end of the video, they tell people to vote “even if you don’t agree with me.” That’s less off-putting.
The video is the introduction to #VoteYourFuture, a project from Anonymous Content CEO Steve Golin. The project will include personalized short films from the celebrities explaining why they are voting this election cycle. Obviously, it will get partisan once the individual videos get released, but people watching only the introduction video and not following what every celebrity cares about, won’t be subjected to that bias.
I’m not a fan of celebrity voting PSAs, to be honest. I don’t want to know what my favorite celebrities think about political issues, I just want them to act or sing or whatever they do that made them famous. Once they get preachy, it’s difficult to separate their pet issue from their craft (or their hypocrisy, as in the case of DiCaprio bemoaning climate change while traveling on private jets).
But if they’re going to make a video urging people to vote, this is the way to do it.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
