How Oprah Winfrey and the vacuous world of celebrity endorsements is emboldening Catholic fervour
If you didn’t manage to watch Kamala Harris being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey – you did not miss much. The interview was filled to the brim with soft questions and one-liner reruns from the presidential debate with Donald Trump. To borrow a cricket metaphor, Oprah bowled very easy balls at Harris. The live-stream event, called The post How Oprah Winfrey and the vacuous world of celebrity endorsements is emboldening Catholic fervour appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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If you didn’t manage to watch Kamala Harris being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey – you did not miss much. The interview was filled to the brim with soft questions and one-liner reruns from the presidential debate with Donald Trump. To borrow a cricket metaphor, Oprah bowled very easy balls at Harris.
The live-stream event, called “Unite for America”, was heavy on identity politics and showcased an all-star lineup of celebrities endorsing the US Vice President now running to become the next US President in November’s election.
Before Harris was even welcomed onto the stage, Bryan Cranston, Chris Rock and Ben Stiller had all peered into the camera to tell Americans how voting for her would “bring back that sense of optimism” to the country, ostensibly unaware that Harris is, arguably, the second most responsible person for the country’s currently shaky optimism levels.
After Harris’s entrance, we then had Julia Roberts gushing about how long she had known “beautiful and wonderful Kamala Harris”, followed by Tracee Ellis Ross, whom Oprah described as giving “really great parties” (well, in that case, I guess we really better listen to her?…).
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Meryl Streep appeared on screen and declared that she was “done with it” regarding the current political situation, while simultaneously encouraging everyone to vote for four more years of the same thing.
The program did raise some important points, not least the issue of gun control, with a powerful testimony from a 15-year-old who lost her hand because of a school shooting. But in the main, the presentation was asinine, with a healthy side of word salad.
That said, what really shone through was how ineffective and patronising it is to have celebrities tell you who to vote for.
The mainstream media, accustomed to gushing over the every move of Hollywood A-listers, has found it difficult to explain exactly why it proved so unsuccessful. With analysis lacking, the commentary has largely had to focus on the undeniable realities of the event: with the Washington Post running an article titled “Harris Joins Oprah Winfrey at Michigan Event”.
Yet the public made their views clear. The reaction on YouTube has been overwhelmingly negative, with the most liked comments including: “Can’t believe she gave us freedom of speech by leaving the comment section open” and “Celebrities don’t live in the same reality as 85 per cent of the USA.” Oprah, not surprisingly, was not so bold; after a few days of ridicule, she disabled comments on all her Instagram posts related to the event to shield herself from the onslaught of the public’s sardonic remarks.
Whether it’s the beaming eyes of Beyoncé, the sympathetic smile of Leonardo DiCaprio, or the concerned look of Tom Hanks – celebrity advocacy seems to have had its day, or rather its half-century; hence finally we see less of Bono at the G8 summit and instead more cynical responses to celebrity interference and proselytising.
It hasn’t always been like this. When Oprah endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, academics at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland later estimated that her endorsement was responsible for 1 million additional votes for Obama.
But times have changed. An ABC News/Ipsos poll published after Taylor Swift’s recent endorsement of Kamala Harris showed 81 per cent of voters said the endorsement would have no impact on their voting decision, with only 6 per cent saying it would make them more inclined to support Harris. Meanwhile, 13 per cent said it would make them less likely to back the vice president.
At the same time, there are tentative – and encouraging – signs that the attention we once gave to celebrities and the answers we craved from them are now being sought in other, more spiritually focused activities.
Both 2022 and 2023 proved record-breaking years for the number of pilgrims completing the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain. Traditionalist Catholics have also been out in force, with a record number of participants in this year’s pilgrimages to Chartres in France and to Covadonga in Spain.
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The rector of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima in Portugal noted a 26.5 per cent rise in pilgrims visiting the shrine between January and April this year compared to the same period in 2023. Local media in Poland have also reported that the shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa at Jasna Góra Monastery could see a record number of pilgrims in 2024.
And when the Pope visited Timor-Leste earlier this year, nearly half the population turned out to greet him.
And it’s not just Catholicism and wider Christianity seeing such an uptick. The Taoist Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage saw a record number of participants in 2024, while a record-breaking 13.5 million Muslims participated in the Umrah Pilgrimage to Mecca in 2023. In Hinduism, the 2019 Ardh Kumbh Mela attracted 120 million people, a 20 million increase on the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela. The 2025 Purna Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj is predicted to draw as many as 150 million.
It seems that no matter where you look people, dissatisfied with the groupthink imposed by celebrity culture, are seeking answers to life’s questions. And they prefer to explore these answers independently, or at least in reference to a greater ideal or cause of their own choosing, without relying on celebrities to guide their thoughts.
The decline of celebrity influence has accelerated over the past few years. In 2020, Gal Gadot posted a video on Instagram of herself and celebrity friends singing a rendition of the song Imagine by John Lennon, intended to raise morale in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gadot admitted to feeling a bit philosophical after facing six days of lockdown and thought some well-chosen words followed by a rousing song would help. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from…we are all in this together,” she benevolently sighed at the camera. The implication being that celebrities were feeling the pressure too.
This comforting thought offered by Gadot was made in the face of a virus that would go on to take almost two million lives that year, while the lockdowns themselves have contributed to societal damage that some estimate could last for generations. Gadot’s well-meaning but misguided video received significant backlash. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times described it as “an empty and profoundly awkward gesture”.
Four years later, at the beginning of May 2024, celebrities gathered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the annual Met Gala to raise money for the museum’s Costume Institute. Tickets were priced at $75,000 for an event that would be difficult to describe as truly charitable, given it supported the maintenance and display of insanely costly fashion items.
Meanwhile, on the same day, Palestinians had begun to celebrate after mistakenly believing a ceasefire had been agreed in the Israel-Hamas conflict. This was not the case, with Israel announcing strikes against Hamas in Rafah and calling on Palestinians to leave the eastern part of the city.
The stark contrast between these two realities led to public backlash and the launch of “Blockout 2024″, a movement that sought to block the social media accounts of celebrities who had remained silent in the face of the conflict. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Kevin Hart were just a few of the names shunned by the movement.
It is heartening that the 21st-century man and woman seem increasingly focused on finding truth on the rocky roads of Galicia or among the tent cities of the Kumbh Mela. Unlike the easy and homogenising world of celebrity, these experiences are typically exhausting but also formative and often catalysts for profound self-discovery, revealing the richness of human experience beyond the surface-level distractions of modern life.
As celebrities grapple with their shifting relevance/irrelevance in a world that no longer hangs on their every word, it would be wise for them to consider the counsel of one of their own, Ricky Gervais. During his hosting of the 77th Golden Globes, Gervais delivered a sharp reminder to his fellow luminaries: “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”
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Photo: US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (left) joins Oprah Winfrey at a ‘Unite for America’ live streaming rally in Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA, 19 September 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images.)
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