What is integrity, anyway?!
From Harry Potter to Fox News, celebrities are all too happy to cash a check
According to a report in Variety earlier this week, Fox News Media is launching “The Life of Jesus Podcast” this month and it’s loaded with celebrity names:
“Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt will introduce each half-hour episode, guiding listeners through the life and teachings of Christ. Among the actors voicing characters in the series are Kristen Bell, who plays Mary Magdalene; Sean Astin, who plays Matthew; Neal McDonough, who plays Jesus; Brian Cox, who represents the Voice of God; Malcolm McDowell, who portrays Caiaphas; John Rhys-Davies, who narrates; and Julia Ormond, who voices Mary, Mother of God.
Fox News has spent the better part of 30 years advancing a political ideology that’s been instrumental in orchestrating this moment of crisis through which we’re now living.
When I saw the story, my first thought was: Accepting work and a paycheck from a company with this history? A choice on par with the boldface names who have signed on the recent “Harry Potter” projects that are in the works, including audio books and the HBO series (which the network hopes to leverage into a never ending and profitable franchise).
After years of pouring her own money into anti-trans campaigns, J.K. Rowling’s name has become as synonymous with those efforts as with her “Potter” book series. The actors involved don’t seem to be hard up for roles (or cash) and their participation is a form of cosigning Rowling’s views and ensuring the Potter IP remains part of the pop cultural landscape, reinforcing Rowling’s relevance and influence, and the money that comes with it.
So, is it any different to go to work for Fox News Media? Listen, it got my righteous indignation juices going.
The inclusion of Brian Cox is especially interesting since he’s best known for “Succession,” a ruthless (if toothless) evisceration of a media mogul based, at least in part, on Rupert Murdoch, who is the man behind the Fox News empire. This isn’t even ironic, it’s a whole new level of surreality where nothing matters but the check.
Well, hang on. Hang on!
It turns out there’s a wrinkle to that announcement about “The Life of Jesus Podcast.”
According to Rolling Stone:
[Its release] was news to Bell, who was blindsided by the announcement, as she had recorded the audio for a separate project 15 years ago. Her rep tells Rolling Stone that she only learned that FOX Faith had acquired the long-forgotten project and was spinning it into a brand-new podcast when her team received a request for her to appear on ‘FOX & Friends’ a day before the announcement was blasted out. The rep adds that Bell never gave permission for the old audiobook to be repurposed into a new podcast series.
Huh.
We don’t know what the contract language was on the original project, but an awkward turn of events indeed, although who knows, perhaps some of the cast members are thrilled to learn the series will be piped out to Fox News audiences.
But actually, there is a famous Hollywood talent who is working with Fox Nation, the subscription streaming platform of Fox News, and that would be Martin Scorsese.
It’s not an old project that’s been licensed and repackaged either, like the podcast. Nope, a brand new endeavor called “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints.”
Season 2 recently premiered, in case you were wondering if he had any second thoughts about an ongoing relationship with this entity and allowing his name — his talent and artistry — to be associated with this brand. To elevate and legitimize this brand.
Scorsese’s interest in the Catholic Church and religious lore is well known. He’s probably wanted to make this series for ages. I don’t know if Fox Nation was the only streamer to greenlight the project (or if it offered him the most lucrative deal), but I do know his decision to work with the company is a choice.
A choice that has a way of undercutting so many other choices.
Well, what is integrity, anyway?
If you think this conversation is teetering too close to expectations of moral purity, let’s consider that everyone — from all walks of life — has to make choices about what we’re willing to do in exchange for money. That often involves compromising your principles to one degree or another. It’s a very shitty fact of life. But there also has to be a line you won’t cross.
And all of these folks, from Scorsese to the “Potter” actors, have told us that their line does not extend to this. That’s good information for us to have as viewers.
Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to watch them in other projects and enjoy those other projects.
If you’ve been following what’s happening at Paramount — and all the knee-bending to the current administration that greased the wheels of the company’s purchase, and which may continue apace indefinitely (here’s one example, as reported by The Guardian this week: “Larry Ellison discussed axing CNN hosts with White House in takeover bid talks”) — then maybe we should be side-eying celebrities who choose to work with that company, too.
The thing is, all the major studios and media companies are compromised right now, so you can play this game in such a way that nobody is allowed to work anywhere ever. That’s not particularly useful or realistic.
Ignoring these choices, however, isn’t the answer either. I think awareness is important, and then figuring out how you feel about those choices.
Let’s also step back and acknowledge that most actors — even in-demand actors — know that their professional future is never assured. (That’s true of us all, by the way.) They work gig to gig and, when they reach a certain level, they employ teams of people who have to be paid, as well. We don’t know what other family members they may be supporting. Or what other costs are keeping them up at night. Just because they’re “famous” doesn’t mean they’ve permanently escaped money problems.
So, perhaps, sometimes they have to hold their nose and take a job they otherwise wouldn’t. And how exactly does one communicate that to the general public without running afoul of a disparagement clause that’s likely in their contract, right?
Still.
At a moment when so many celebrities are conspicuously quiet about what’s been happening over the last year, doing these projects is the equivalent of shouting from the rooftops: “These actually are my politics.”
Or perhaps: “I don’t care.”
Switching gears …
This week, Harper’s Bazaar published a cover story on Meghan Markle — Meghan Sussex, as she prefers — and it was more or less a typical celebrity profile.
Something small caught my eye, though.
“Meghan has acquired a level of fame that is irrevocable,” writes the story’s author Kaitlyn Greenidge. “The question becomes, what does one woman do with that amount of power and tricky sort of influence?”
That’s a really good question! And it’s one I think about a lot when it comes to celebrities with sizable clout. How are they using it?
For Meghan, this is the answer, as summarized by Greenidge:
(She’s) focused on the projects she has built for herself and that fit her lifestyle as a mother of young children (Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four).
Sounds reasonable.
Meghan is an LA native, and at one point she is asked about a period from her childhood in 1992 when the city was reeling from the Rodney King verdict:
It was cinematic in a way I don’t think many people can understand. … It was so visual. Smoke everywhere. People were driving around with the back of their SUVs open. I saw people running with boxes of diapers, smashed windows, so much fire and ash falling from the sky that it felt like snow.”
As we sit at the Polo Lounge, the city is currently at the center of a national fight over the enforcement of this administration’s immigration policy and the continued deployment of the National Guard to urban areas. But the city, Meghan says many times over the course of our conversation, is “resilient.” “It was scary, but L.A. survived it.”
OK. So. This section is interesting because Meghan doesn’t introduce the subject of imperiled immigrants, Greenidge does.
Meghan herself never talks about what’s currently happening.
The immigration raids are what has the city reeling today and I understand why Greenidge, the writer, adds the reference. I’m less clear, though, on why she brings up 1992 and then connects it to what’s happening now if she’s not going to discuss that with Meghan.
Did Greenidge ask direct questions about what’s been happening to immigrant people? We don’t know. Most deadlines for monthly magazines are three months ahead of publication date, so it’s possible this interview was done many months ago. So much has worsened since.
But the absence of this topic from their published conversation is conspicuous because Meghan herself is married to an immigrant.
Harry is white and wealthy. He moves in exclusive circles and has private security. Also: Son of the king of England. Not the kind of immigrant ICE and DHS are targeting.
We don’t know what Harry and Meghan think and say behind closed doors. They could be lending support very quietly and anonymously. It’s also possible they’ve been advised to stay silent on immigration; don’t poke the bear and incur the wrath of the current administration. They’ve built a lovely life for their family in Montecito and I can understand not wanting to jeopardize that. They have so many other potential complications and risks to contend with already, why add one more?
But then she talks about the value of being brave:
When I ask Meghan what she hopes her kids see when they see her working, she tells me, “I hope they see the value of being brave.”
It’s not for any of us to decide what “being brave” looks like for someone else.
So let’s take the focus off Meghan and speak more generally about people with power and/or influence. Those two things are supposed to make it easier to be brave.
To not take the money, despite the dodgy source.
To not stay silent.
To not create the appearance that you’re moving through life carefully sidestepping the fears and calamities affecting those who have no power and no influence.
I’m going to close out with a story that is about someone’s bravery. He has neither power nor influence in the traditional sense, but he is leveraging what he does have, which is doggedness.
This week, Mother Jones published this story:
Meet the Veteran Who Chases ICE on a Scooter
Clifford “Buzz” Grambo patrols the streets of Baltimore to keep his neighbors safe — and make federal agents uncomfortable
“A lot of people are worried about being under the spotlight of this regime,” he told reporter Isabela Dias. “I figure I’m already in their spotlight.”
Talk about putting your privilege as white guy to work.
Grambo, 43, is one of countless everyday people across the country stepping up to repudiate the descent of federal law enforcement agencies onto their cities and the violent abduction of their immigrant neighbors in broad daylight. In the face of increased threats of repression and at risk of retaliation, their displays of defiance, however small, show that resistance can surface anywhere.
The piece opens with an anecdote that sets the tone. Recently, Grambo decided to upgrade his electric scooter:
The old one he had purchased online reached only 16 mph and wasn’t cutting it anymore. He needed to go faster to keep up with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement cars he chases around Baltimore. So Grambo bought a Segway Max G3, which features a 2,000-watt motor and can get up to 28 mph.
“The first time I caught up to them, I could tell that they already knew who I was,” he told me when we first spoke on the phone in late October. “They had seen me before, so they thought they were just going to speed away.
I was like, ‘Ha ha, bitches, I got a new scooter!’”