Katy Perry has bullied me for years.
I don't know why you are so financially involved with celebrities. It doesn't seem to me that most of them know or care about human rights; many of those who think that they do excuse themselves about who gets treated like a person on an individual basis or when it's expedient for them to encourage the abuse of entire groups of people.
Most of them seem to be obtuse about the things that I say every day; they don't understand any of it or care about any of it. They also don't care about how upset I get about what's happening; they are not only mostly uneducated, arrogant and relentlessly self-centered, they are without the empathy that could mentally guide them to stop being abusive even if they don't understand why their gratuitous actions are upsetting their target.
Sometimes, I interact with them online because the conglomerate has caused me not to have a viable social life, or because I hope that they might get better, or because I want to know what they're saying about me so that I can tell then to leave me alone. Those interactions create no obligation from me to them, which it seems to me is not the situation for your interactions with them.
Nobody should have direct access to the White House or to Presidential candidates just because of having money and the ability to generate publicity. There are a lot of people who aren't rich or famous or connected to the image machine who know a lot about all sorts of issues, who deserve to have that type of access.
I like being removed from direct contact with politics. I am not seeking personal or professional advancement from the things that I write or talk about, nor do I think it would be appropriate for me to have direct and immediate political influence. I do not have formal political training. My highest level of education is an Associate's Degree from community college. What I hope happens when I'm writing and speaking well is that people think about what I say and make informed decisions based on what they already know and other data that they gather.
I know that celebrities, with their millions of social media followers, are a difficult source of votes to ignore. What's the price, though?
Copyright, L. Kochman, March 4, 2016 @ 7:15 p.m.
