Decision 2024: How Bradley Whitford's Recent Tweet Is Yet Another Example of Why Politicians Give Too Much Power to Celebrities

 

For someone who has written for much of his adult life about television and who has always been extremely supportive of the talent within it, my personal interest in the talent involved as always been negligible. I might watch previews of upcoming seasons of TV shows on cable behind the scenes of series I love, and I will read articles about them in regards to those same shows and their previous work. But that represents the absolute limit of my interest in anything they have to say. This includes whatever appearances they will make on talk shows or late night TV over the years: much as I loved Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart I’ve never really wanted to watch any of their interviews with TV stars in my life. I have always judges actors by their work alone and it has held in good stead.

This is why I’ve always viewed any political views any actor or celebrity has as irrelevant to my existence. Indeed, I frequently wonder why so many people, not just in the industry but everywhere, really seem to care what a celebrity thinks about any issue that doesn’t involve the craft of acting. Acting is their profession; in everything else they are fundamentally unqualified to talk about with any real authority.

I can’t understand why this seems to be a divide that most people can’t overcome. You wouldn’t ask Patrick Dempsey to perform brain surgery or Sam Waterston to prosecute a murder trial, or Kyle Chandler to coach a high school football game. They are entitled to their opinions –  despite what you will here from the extremists on both sides, everyone is – but that doesn’t mean they will be qualified or intelligent.  The idea that an actor might have a better opinion on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, the economy or indeed Congressional races anywhere in America, then political experts in the field is one of the dumbest things possible. I express my opinions in this article but I fully acknowledge that there are some subjects I am unqualified to speak of and even that my opinion may very well be unqualified.  To consider myself an authority on anything outside my limited expertise would be the height of egomania. And the idea that an actor might know more about politics then anyone who has spent their career in that arena would take a special kind of arrogance – and to give them weight with politicians would show a special kind of foolishness.

So when I receive a fundraising email from the DNC using Bradley Whitford as it’s headline, I am once again forced the question that party’s intelligence. Bradley Whitford never worked for the White House in real life; he just played someone who did on TV. Should even a fundraising email give the same authority to someone who worked for three fictional Democratic presidential campaigns and two fictional Democratic Presidential administration as Hilary Clinton? To put it bluntly Linda Tripp had more experience working for a President that Bradley Whitford ever did: why should his opinion have more weight than hers would?

And it’s worth noting that in that fundraiser Whitford doesn’t give the same brilliant, intelligent advice you would have expected from Josh Lyman. He is quoted as saying: “The most fantastic thing in The West Wing was that we showed Republicans as being rational.”  To put it in the terms of the series he was a part of this is the kind of thing that no character on The West Wing would have said in public. (Come to think of it, Josh was nearly fired in the Pilot for saying something far less incendiary on national television about a member of the religious right.)

Even separated from the fantasy of The West Wing, this is hardly the kind of statement Joe Biden’s White House (who Whitford was fundraising for at the time) would have approved of making. It is, on the contrary, the kind of political polarizing statement one has come to expect from so many Republicans and conservative talking heads over the years. Most of the people in the Democratic Party might very well believe this and even say it in private. But it’s hardly the kind of thing you expect from a party that has made the argument it is the party of civility. I’d say it was one of the dumbest things Whitford could say…but then he said something infinitely worse.

As most of you are no doubt aware of Robert F. Kennedy Jr spent much of 2023 and 2024 running an increasingly dysfunctional third-party candidacy for President. His public views had become increasingly problematic overtime to the point that many of his own brothers and sisters have disassociated themselves from him during the campaign.

His wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, has spent much of the same period not appearing with him and saying that she has had no comment on it. This is a hard line to walk for anyone who is married to a political figure and in this century it has gotten far worse. I can’t imagine it was easy for Hines to stay quiet or the amount of flak that she’s taken in Hollywood circles over the last year. But mostly no one bothered with it – until the past few weeks.

Last month Kennedy ended his run for the White House and endorsed Trump for the Presidency. Again his family continued to do all but disown him but Hines didn’t taking the line that she was staying out of it.

Now I’d like to ask what anyone thinks Hines could do? She may not agree with her husband’s views but she is still married to him and you’d think wedding vows should matter more than politics then marriage. There’s also the argument of what her opinion matters. If Hines were to publicly denounce RFK, Jr there’s no evidence it would make a difference in the eyes of either his potential voters or Trump’s: there’s never been any evidence that the spouse of a politician public views would make a dent in what their supporters feel. It might very well be a fatal blow to a marriage that must be awkward for the two of them right now.

Hines has been walking a middle ground that she has to. And as you all know by now for extremists if you’re not with them, you're against them.

About a week ago Whitford blasted Hines in a tweet. I have no intention of quoting it here or even posting a link to it. I have never used this blog to give oxygen to someone’s else hate speech – and I do consider it as much – and I’m not going to start now. I imagine you can find it without having to look that hard if you haven’t already.

To say that it’s not the thing Aaron Sorkin would say, much less write, is the understatement of the decade. I have seen less misogynistic and simple-minded statements in the comments sections of those who think that Brie Larson ruined the MCU and Amanda Sternberg desecrated Star Wars. I’ve heard worst things from the left over the years to be sure but this is the kind of statement that both parts of the GOP Presidential ticket would fully and completely support – if not make themselves.

I could make a more cogent argument but someone else made a more lucid and rational one – and it might tell you everything you need  to know that it was Bill Maher.

As I’ve said countless times before I think Maher is a dinosaur when it comes both to his comedy and his politics – and indeed he does make the old point of: “This is why I hate the left.” But context always matters and there are four reasons why I’m positive Maher isn’t being his contrarian himself:

1.      He has always been willing to defend the opinion of entertainers who make statements that are consider ‘anti-woke’

2.      He is famously opposed to marriage as a concept.

3.      He almost never takes the side of women in any of his comedy, and

4.      Bradley Whitford has been a frequent guest on Real Time ever since it debuted. I’m not sure how many times Whitford appeared over the years but it may have been well over a dozen.

 This is what Maher said about Hines on Friday's episode of Real Time:

“His wife is Cheryl Hines, who Larry David was quoted describing as ‘the best person I ever met, the one person in Hollywood who doesn’t have a single enemy. Well, now she does…because she didn’t throw her husband under the bus when her husband made a decision about something, which she’s made plain she disagrees with.

After posting  Whitford’s quote:

“Well, you know what I think is not gutsy? Mansplaining to a woman – but of course, not to her face – how she should sacrifice her marriage, all so you could read something on Twitter that met with your approval…There’s an ugliness to the left they never used to have…Going after the wife, even the mafia doesn’t do that. In theory, liberals are compassionate. In practice, this guy can’t even understand one of the most basic dilemmas common to all humans – that when you’re married, sometimes you have to swallow some shit.”

 

In keeping with the left’s attitude the magazine Salon took more objection to Maher’s position then anything Whitford said or did. The loyalty that he’s in defense of is met with the adjective ‘apparently’. You can see in the article that they seem to hold Maher in contempt for taking Hines’s side (they don’t even print Whitford’s tweet, which is typical).

 

Maher then quotes Obama for his speech at the convention where he critiqued the idea that the only way to ‘win’ was to ‘scold and shame and out-yell the other side.”

 

Bradley, did you go to the bathroom or something when that came on?” Maher says. “Because it’s almost like he was talking to you by name.”

 

Maher acknowledges all of how Trump drives people insane, his relationship with Whitford saying he used to know him: “He wasn’t this guy.” And in a note of more compassion than Whitford or social media shows Hines he said: “He may relish writing Cheryl Hines off; I’m not writing him off.”

 

I hate to say this Bradley but when you’ve lost the moral high ground to Bill Maher, you really need to look in the mirror. But I know all too well the left will never do that. In the eyes of the left, your political views trump – and I use that word deliberately – everything else in your life: your race, your religion, your sexuality, your gender, your family relationships and apparently your marriage.

Now I’m not going to hold this against Whitford as an actor; like Maher I’m more than willing to let this go and review whatever work he does on TV and movies in the future. But Whitford’s behavior is by far just the most recent example of how Hollywood has a ridiculous level of influence in our politics even though there’s no evidence that they are any more enlightened about anything.

Back in July George Clooney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he made it clear Biden should step down. He acknowledged he didn’t know anything about politics or policy but his opinion mattered because “he’d raised a lot of money for the Democratic Party.”

I know that fundraising has done much to destroy both political parties but say what you will about the Republicans: they have the common sense to give away the game on Fox News. The Koch brothers may have destroyed what was left of the GOP; they didn’t rub it in by bragging about it to Sean Hannity the way that Clooney does in the kind of way – well, it has to be said – you’d expect from one of his movies.

In my opinion  - albeit an amateur one – Hollywood’s influence in the Democratic Party is the visual symbol of everything wrong with it the same way that the Christian right is for the Republicans. However there’s a vital difference, one the Democrats seem incapable of grasping. For all the many flaws in the religious right and how they’ve corrupted the party, they still have enough influence to bring in their voters election cycle after cycle. By contrast there has never been any evidence, historical or otherwise, that Hollywood can bring any new voters in and has been just as good at driving them away. It doesn’t help the image of the Democratic Party as ‘coastal elites’ and out-of-touch with America when it prioritizes having members of The West Wing fundraise for it as much as it does Democratic politicians. And yet this has been happening for my entire lifetime.

The idea that having Taylor Swift campaign will help win over voters in Tennessee is as naïve an idea as believing that Kanye West will help win over African-Americans for the GOP. This is something that late night will mock on TV and never see the contradiction of their own embrace of it.  The Democrats already have the left-wing and based on the articles I’ve read on both medium and other journals like Jacobin and The Nation, I’m not even convinced it doesn’t hurt them with so many progressives. They will make the kind of bullying statements online that Whitford has (and in fact they have) but it doesn’t win over swing voters any better than the ones we hear being made on Fox News. And it’s certainly not built on any idea of unity or civility; it’s about tribalism plain and simple. I know as much as anything about the bubbles extremists stay in; and it has nothing to do with winning over hearts and minds but rather preaching to the choir. It’s certainly not the kind of campaign that you’d see on The West Wing.

I’m going to close this article, appropriately, with a line from The West Wing itself, one that was delivered to Whitford’s character and really fits the case. In the first season Leo (John Spencer) is the potential target of an investigation and Josh wants to do a ‘pre-emptive strike.” Sam spent the night with an escort in the Pilot and Josh wants to visit her to know if she’s spent time with any high-ranking Republicans. Leo tells him not too strongly. Josh goes to Sam anyway. Sam objects until Josh tells him why.

The two of them visit the escort (Lisa Edelstein) who is offended and tells them as much. She mentions she has spent time with high-ranking Republicans as well as high ranking Democrats. “You want me to give you their names?” she sneers at them. Josh backs off but tries to explain. The escort says with all the sincerity in the world: “You’re supposed to be the good guys. You should act like it.”

Sorkin may have been an idealist in his version of The West Wing but it’s clear that Whitford has apparently forgotten his lines when it comes to what is the most famous episode of the show he became a star in. (‘In Excelsis Deo’ is the only episode to win an Emmy for writing; I’ll get to it in my writing on TV.) And Sorkin makes the clearest argument for what our attitude should be in an increasingly polarized world. It’s true for everybody, but its just as true for Democrats as Republicans, and the left as it is the right. The last decade has changed so much but it hasn’t changed this. You’re supposed to be the good guys. You should act like it.