When Celebrity and Politics Meet
For those that don’t follow the entertainment industry, there was an arrest that is causing reverberations across that industry. There is speculation the impact will reach far outside music, and even outside the larger entertainment industry, and into politics.
Sean Combs, who has been known as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, and Diddy, was arrested last week and charged with sex trafficking, coercion, conspiracy, and a number of other charges. As disturbing as all that is on the surface, for a rap star and extremely successful music producer, the charges aren’t all that surprising. Go back in time and think about the concert groupie stories from the sixties through the eighties. Lots of crazy things go on backstage.
As the details have been slowly revealed, this seems to be a little more than drunk rock stars having sex on the tour bus with some not-so-legal girls. Reports have come out about GALLONS of baby oil and HUNDREDS of sex toys. Yeah, hundreds. So weird. Evidently, he used to throw these parties called “Freak Offs”. Add in drugs, alcohol, and sex workers and I don’t really need to know much more than those few details to understand what was going on.
Really, it sounds like the stories from Studio 54 or Hollywood cocaine parties of the 1980s. So, why are we SO SHOCKED?
Because politics and entertainment are no longer two separate entities that occasionally overlap. They are intermixed and can no longer be separated. Just last week it was a MAJOR headline that Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Harris. News agencies were calculating the shift in the polls because a pop star picked her candidate. It’s that big.
Do you think politicians DON’T know the power of entertainers to impact an election? Of course they do. Do you remember President Obama hanging around with Jay-Z and Beyonce? They were the two most influential people in entertainment at the time. That’s not an accident. Entertainers and politicians are narcissists. They spend time with each other because it makes them feel special.
Back to Puff Daddy. When this story broke, my instant reaction was “this is going to be huge”. The reason why his arrest is such a big deal? Check his list of known friends in entertainment and politics. He has been throwing parties since the 1990s, so the list is long and varied, and just because someone attended one of his parties doesn’t mean they participated in criminal activity. We also do not know how long these “Freak Off” parties have been going on.
The point is, he has connections. Lots of them. And they are powerful people.
There have already been comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein and his level of criminal activity and his connections to very famous and powerful people. There have also been comparisons to Harvey Weinstein in that “people knew” what was going on and didn’t say anything because Diddy was so influential. There have been a few noticeable reactions from people in the music industry. Both Pharrell (producer/performer) and Pink (performer) completely cleaned their X accounts since his arrest. I don’t believe in coincidences, so that’s not it. Pharrell is saying he was “hacked”. Uh-huh.
Other celebrities who have had no dealings with Diddy are making it very clear they are not associated. Some that do have a history with him are making it known they are either neutral (no comment) or are happy he got arrested. Outside of his legal team, NO ONE is defending him. NO ONE. That tells you something right there.
How far does all this reach? It’s tough to tell right now, but there has been the promise of “a list” of other people. There is speculation. Oprah. Jay-Z and Beyonce. Taylor Swift. Ashton Kutcher. There are some heavy, heavy hitters being associated with Diddy. And who are THOSE people associated with? I’ve already mentioned the Obamas and Jay-Z/Beyonce. My mind has been spinning with the potential far reaching implications of this. It was somewhat exciting, then reality set in.
Jeffrey Epstein was the same thing. Human trafficking. Underage girls. We knew President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew had significant dealings with him and even visited his island. There were many others that should have been implicated. He’s dead now. Before trial. Before testimony.
His crony and participant in illegal activities, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been arrested and has been in jail for over two years. She was convicted. We STILL don’t know who else was on that list and who else visited that island and who else participated in criminal activity. And we likely won’t ever know.
So, while I was very excited to see who was going to go down with Diddy, I have come back to reality. We won’t know. There may be a few small fish that get caught up in this, but the major players will walk away, clean. In about four or five years, some other major player will get arrested for sex trafficking and pandering to celebrities and politicians. The next Epstein or Diddy. That person will also go to jail and the major players will walk away, again. And the cycle will continue to repeat itself.
Yet, every election cycle, we still care who is going to get the Taylor Swift endorsement. Or the Jay-Z endorsement. Or the Alec Baldwin endorsement. Or the Tom Hanks endorsement. Or the “next greatest thing” endorsement. We will forget either the candidate or the celebrity endorser were associated with Diddy, or Epstein, or Weinstein. We will listen intently to Secretary Clinton while she tells us who to vote for, knowing she covered up her husband’s illegal activities for decades. We will cheer when our favorite comedian, who dropped out of high school and never went back, endorses our favorite candidate. Or we will turn our back on our favorite actor when they endorse “the other guy”.
It’s disappointing. We should all be disappointed, not in the celebrities, and not even in the system that allows this, but in ourselves for being completely distracted from reality When Celebrity and Politics Meet.