Love their work. Don’t agree with their politics.

Isn’t it funny how we all think we’re right. Especially when it comes to our politics. And I think, if one sits to one particular side of the political spectrum, that one probably tends to associate with people and read online blogs of people and organisations that have a similar point of view. This tends to reinforce one’s values and sense of ‘rightness’. We’re all crusaders, man! Fighting for what’s right and proper!

For me personally I identify as conservative. I believe in an individual’s right to self determination, small government, capitalism, border protection, less welfare, less bleeding hearts, smacking children if necessary, stiff sentencing, equality for all races and no singling out ethnic or religious groups for special treatment. So in the past few days I’ve had a bit of a culture shock in realising that many of the people whose work I most admire appear to have political views vastly different from my own.

Probably the biggest surprise – Ben Elton. I’ve been admiring his work since The Young Ones in the 80s, have read all of his books and always thought of him as being a fairly pragmatic kind of bloke. In hindsight, looking at books like Stark I wonder why I didn’t pick up his leftist tendencies earlier. In any case I just read Meltdown and the message seemed to me that while he was taking the piss out of greedy traders (and fair enough too) that he also believed in a people’s right to make money and be rich so long as it’s all above board. Imagine my surprise when I read on his Wikipedia page (if that can be considered a credible source) that he is/was a Socialist and is a self confessed ‘Welfare State Labour Voter’.

Then there’s Graham Linehan, who is also fantastically hilarious writer. The IT Crowd and Black Books remain 2 of my all time favourite British comedies, so imagine my disappointment to seeing him retweet links to anti-Israeli propaganda stories. Sorry, but while it is tragic that Palestinians are dying, there are two sides to this argument. In my view they are both as bad as each other, and any article that attempts to garner sympathy for one side while ignoring the other’s misdeeds is to be ignored. And generally, as far as I can see most of the apologists for Palestine (indeed, apologists for any form of Islamic terrorism) appear to be from the left. I could perhaps have written it off as an aberration if it wasn’t closely followed by a retweet of this tweet (sorry, can’t seem to link to the actual retweet) about a right wing blogger who was ‘forced to relocate’ after splitting from the right due to violent threats. As if the right are the only ones who have nasty people in their midst.

There are plenty of others too from . People like Robert Llewellyn, John Birmingham, Will Anderson (ok, I’m not that much of a fan), Stephen Fry (him I’m not surprised), Tim Minchin, Alan Davies, heck there are heaps of others I haven’t thought of. All of these people have at some point in the time I’ve been observing their tweets or reading their blogs or whatever… have made some comment that’s made me think ‘Ohhh… he’s one of those bleeding heart lefties’.

In fact, I just googled ‘list of leftist celebrities’ and came up with this page – there are MANY people on this list whose work I enjoy or admire.

So I’m left with a few thoughts on the matter. And here is a disclaimer: I apologise if I have misrepresented the views of anyone on this list. If I have misinterpreted something, please comment or tweet me because this is one case where being proven wrong would be quite nice 🙂

Where are all the prominent conservatives in the celebrity ranks? Are there any? Someone please point me out a few to restore my faith in the movement. Exclude people who don’t make a living out of it, this means no Andrew Bolts, Rush Limbaughs, or leaders of the BNP.

If there are any, they mostly seem to be keeping their views to themselves. To be honest, I think this is probably good advice for ALL celebrities, lest they shatter the illusions of your fans.

Why are there so many leftists out there in the ranks of our public figures? I’ve been musing on it for a day or two and so far this is what I’ve come up with:

Firstly, it is again ‘cool’ to be a bleeding heart. If you’re in a position of authority (like say, Tony Abbott) and you express any kind of slightly right wing view, three hundred different minority groups and left leaning journalists jump out of the woodwork and fire poison pen letters at you from all directions. Additionally, I guess most of the above list are in the arts in some form. That probably makes it a better than even bet that they’ve been exposed to some kind of socialist indoctrination at a university somewhere along the way 🙂

Secondly, those celebrities who have done pretty well for themselves can afford to be lefties. Some of the people on this list (but not all) have enough money and enough distance from us common people that they don’t have to deal with the consequences of opening our borders to all and sundry (I thought Wilson Tuckey was vindicated today by the way). They won’t have to worry too much about the increased cost of living if an ETS is brought in, they can afford it (and it doesn’t seem to bother them that we’re supposed be handing billions of dollars over to the UN to be redistributed to ‘developing countries’, to be spent as they see fit, more than likely on bigger limos and more guns for the socialist dictators in those countries).

Thirdly, I guess many people in the public eye genuinely want to use their position for what they feel is the common good. That ‘common good’ usually happens to be an extreme green cause or help for refugees or fixing world poverty or some other issue which is associated with the left. I do wonder if some conservatives are scared to represent these causes for fear of being misrepresented as being of that political persuasion – some of them are genuinely worthy causes, but it is a bit of a minefield in so far as making sure that money is spent on what it’s supposed to be. So many charity groups these days are so overrun by bureaucracy that sucks up funds like a sponge; indeed I know of people who’ve chosen to head overseas themselves and bring money and gifts to orphanages themselves rather than entrust someone else to do it. Now that’s helping people folks, and the people in question didn’t make a big deal out of it either, I only found out because I asked.

To finish though, I am not such a one eyed extremist that I can’t like a person or their work if we have strongly differing opinions. None of the people above have exhibited the kind of smug self righteousness, nastiness or pettiness that so annoys me about many in leftist circles, as far as I can see. And I’ll continue to enjoy their work and be a fan despite our differing politics.

If anyone wants to enlighten me as to who the prominent conservative celebrities are (particularly British and Australian ones) then please do comment or tweet me. I did find a few lists like this and this but new information is always good, especially Australian oriented. The general consensus does seem to be that when it comes to people in the public eye, us right wingers are outnumbered. Likewise if you just want to agree, disagree or argue with me, civil debate is always welcome so feel free to tweet or comment 🙂