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British author and presenter Richard Osman has hit out at politically vocal celebrities, telling them to stop spouting their political opinions because “nobody is listening to you.”
Over the past few weeks, several Hollywood figures, including George Clooney and Rob Reiner, have called on President Joe Biden to step down following his shaky performance at the first 2024 presidential debate last month against Donald Trump.
“I genuinely think this is every single election over here and in America – show business does get involved and we hear the opinions of celebrities and we hear about the importance of their views on the records of different candidates and their views on the direction of the country they live in,” Osman, 53, said on a recent episode of his The Rest is Entertainment podcast.
“Nobody has ever given the first toss about anything anyone from the entertainment industry has ever said about any political issue,” The Thursday Murder Club author continued. “There’s a load of little things that happen in this country and you can send a tweet and people go, ‘Oh yeah, that was an interesting take on that.’”
Arguing that an election is “way beyond the scope of the entertainment industry,” he added: “You can have all the opinions you want, you can spout whatever you want to do on whatever forum you want to, you can talk on whatever chat show you want to, nobody is listening to you.
“Because in elections, people are thinking about their house, their neighbors, their school, their town, their infrastructure, their safety, that’s all they’re thinking about,” Osman said, “and every single time somebody in show business gives an opinion on an election, it does the exact opposite thing of what it’s supposed to do, and yet they still do it.”
In a new op-ed for The New York Times, Oscar-winning actor Clooney wrote that while “I love Joe Biden,” the Democrats “need a new nominee.”
The Oceans Eleven star called on “top Democrats,” including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to “ask this president to voluntarily step aside.”
Acknowledging that Clooney “does many good things around the world, quietly, and he does an awful lot of good in an awful lot of countries for an awful lot of people,” Osman argued: “Nobody in the world has ever gone, ‘Before I vote, just need to check on who George Clooney thinks I should vote for.’ You must know that celebrities.”
Clarifying that he wasn’t trying to take away from celebrities giving to charities and doing other important activism, the former Pointless co-host said: “But the one thing we don’t need is public pronouncements of opinions.”
Despite Biden’s poor debate performance sparking fear among his supporters, donors and colleagues, the incumbent president has defiantly confirmed that he is “firmly committed to staying in the race.”
“The question of how we move forward has been well aired for over a week now,” Biden wrote in a two-page letter. “And it’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump.”
