Celebrities could make
‘slaves for sale’ of their fans

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When we come home tired and down in spirit from working so hard and long to make a living, there they are…just one click away to entertain us in various ways – singing, dancing, tickling us with their cracks, or working with our psyche in various emotional settings to re-bundle the broken self.

How we wish that these celebrities will forever be there to make our tired day pleasant and to re-invigorate our enthusiasm and zest to face with a stout heart the challenges of every day!

Recognizing that it is in entertaining us that they are at best in helping us, we feel that they should never be something else, like becoming politicians, where they are not as good, or even out of touch, as to be a frustration later to even their fans.

But trying out elsewhere is every man or woman’s right. In fact, some of them have already found themselves in politics. Out of the make-believe world of fiction and pure entertainment, they have plunged themselves into the (more challenging?) world of hard realities, intrigues and power play, where most of them have made it simply because of the unreasoning love of their fans.

But love for them is not the real measure of an honest, sincere and competent public servant, as fans realized later with some of their idols in public office. The real measure is the candidate, himself or herself, i.e., whether he or she has the required qualifications or not.

Because of this wrong perception of the qualification of a candidate, we have, in fact, seen many of them falling out of the way on their bid for reelection or seek higher positions in the next elections.

But making yourself, as a celebrity endorser, believe you can do the task with the sheer push of the love of your fans, when actually you can’t, is not as bad as making people vote for an undesirable candidate simply for the money you get in endorsing him or her.

What happens here is that you are earning millions of pesos from the candidate at the expense of your fans’ right to vote wisely which they would fail to do by blindly following your endorsement.

We are not saying that all of these celebrities that are endorsing candidates are doing it just for the millions of pesos they can earn from it. Some of them might have also seen in the candidates they are endorsing their trustworthiness in public office.

However, let us face the fact that these celebrities can also be blinded with money as to ignore the kind of candidates they are endorsing.

If that happens – with the celebrities endorsing candidates despite their known notoriety, dishonesty, insincerity, and incompetence – then it would be selling their fans like the slaves of old in the marketplace.

The buyer (the candidate, in this case) gets what he wants from the slaves (the fans’ votes) in exchange for a big price (the millions of pesos for the endorsing celebrity).

We would like, therefore, to advise the fans to be careful about whom your celebrity idols are endorsing. In the first place, it is not them you are voting for. Second, which is more important, the measure of the right candidates is not your love for your idols but in what the candidates really are. If a candidate, in your judgment, is  really notorious, dishonest, insincere or incompetent, your love for your celebrity idol, or even the attempts of the candidate to make you feel good with his or her hug or warm handclasp, won’t change that a bit.