"Dance, Monkey! Dance!"

The past year has seen a slew of…takes that aren’t so well thought-out: is Bernie Sanders the left-leaning Donald Trump? Will Sanders be the Democrats’ downfall? Is Mike Bloomberg the MVP of the Democratic race? And, most-importantly, will this cause Jewish voters a headache? (Okay, that last one was accurate.)

Yet underneath the bickering, there’s one aspect that’s getting overlooked: politics and celebrities.

The history of celebrities getting involved in politics is long and complicated. Doubly-so for Hollywood celebrities, who’ve had their noses in it for all of Hollywood’s existence; after all, Ronald Reagan was a B-list movie and TV actor before he became Governor of California. Even now, the current president was originally a C-list TV star, and he continues to remind us all of why! Politics and Hollywood are like peanut butter and jelly. But is that necessarily right?

While I’m firmly in the camp that thinks it’s acceptable for celebrities to share their political opinions, I get some of the backlash surrounding that; after all, celebrities are often lavish individuals who got where they were because of their talent, not their smarts. Many are also dropouts. Add in that a lot of them aren’t exactly the most worldly, and it’s easy to be mad when they jump head first into hot water without thinking. Trust me, it’s bad enough when we do it!

That said, much of the backlash is also unfounded and hypocritical, for three reasons. The first is that sometimes they are educated on the topics they discuss. Mayim Bialik has a PhD in neuroscience, so anything she’d say about chemistry or biology would probably hold more water than your typical know-all. Conversely, Ashton Kutcher’s a member of The UN council on human trafficking, so he’d probably know a lot about that. Saying that a celebrity shouldn’t discuss a subject they’re well-versed in is dishonest.

Two, celebrities aren’t hive-minded. They don’t all travel in the same circles, they don’t all come from the same backgrounds, and, yes, they don’t all think alike. Contrary to what media heads might have you believe, Hollywood is diverse politically, complete with Republicans and Democrats-alike. We simply don’t realize that because not every celebrity in Hollywood has disclosed their political beliefs.

Besides, I think people would be surprised how conservative-minded Hollywood is. It’s a place paved with money, and money’s an inherently-conservative concept. It’s especially true when you factor in the producing and executive-producing side. If people like Clint Eastwood and Harvey Weinstein, two not-really-left-leaning individuals, can have lots of influence for so long, then chances are there’s more about Hollywood that we don’t know about when it comes to politics. I’m willing to bet on it.

I emphasize the “conservative” part because that’s often what surfaces when celebrities and politics are mentioned together. It’s usually conservative pundits on cable news and print media that make the biggest fuss: “The Hollywood Elites don’t know enough about the real world to make political statements”. Sometimes, these outlets will even bring on conservative-minded celebrities to reemphasize their talking points. (Look at how often people like Ben Stein and Ben Shapiro, two conservative-minded celebrities, are brought onto Fox News, for instance. You’d be surprised.)

It’s not that “celebrities shouldn’t get political”. That’d be too obvious. No, the real claim is that “celebrities shouldn’t make political statements that [I] disagree with”. Alternatively, it’s “celebrities should always agree with me”. That’s what’s really being insinuated.

Which leads to my third point: the celebrities themselves. They’re not puppets. Their job might be to perform, but they’re pretending for a living. It’s fictional, not real. Hollywood celebrities, when you get down to it, are people who get paid a lot of money to entertain you. You can argue that their insane wealth is an issue, but that’s for another discussion.

Celebrities are also entitled to have political opinions. Does that make them the be-all-end-all of any discussion? No. Does that make them always the best-educated politically? Again, no. Does that mean they don’t put their feet in their mouths on a regular basis? Of course not! Celebrities are people, and, like people, they’re incredibly-flawed.

But it’s this insistence that celebrities behave and do what they’re told, like pets, that irks me. The whole “Dance monkey, dance!” schtick gets old quickly. It implies that they’re not allowed to have lives outside of acting. And it implies that they’re disposable, which is incredibly-demeaning to their non-acting accomplishments. Because, rest assured, they often have non-acting accomplishments.

I’m not saying that celebrities are always the most well-informed, as many aren’t. I’m also not saying that you have to always agree with them, because you don’t. But the insistence that they can’t say or do anything political because “they’re actors” is a gross-misrepresentation of the power and influence they can have. If Taylor Swift can get the Tennessee mid-term voting deadline extended by simply asking her fans to vote, then there’s real power to what celebrities, especially in Hollywood, are capable of. Whether or not they use that power for good, however, is up to them.

But if they don’t? Well…at least they make for good comedic fodder, right?