Washington DC is Hollywood for ugly people – but it doesn’t have to be. Appearance Reform is the politics of possibility.
Hollywood actors can read a speech better than a “real politician” like, say, Newt Gingrich. Ronald Reagan was an actor. They had professional Hollywood writers writing Reagan’s jokes, which they would write on 3×5 cards, which Reagan would read from.
Reagan had great timing and they have a great highlight reel of his best Presidential appearances on Youtube. It’s one long “In Soviet Russia, joke tells you!” joke. Did you hear the one about the liberal?
Matthew McConaughey is socially liberal in the sense he’s not bad, but he’s also conservative in the good, personal sense. Use the techno-geek-speak: be promiscuous in what you accept, but conservative in what your emit. So of course Matthew McConaughey supports same-sex marriage for those who want it, and opposite-sex marriage for those who want that. Always supportive of the sanctity to choose life. A strong military and independence from foreign oil by leveraging Green Carbon Fracking.
Matthew McConaughey is like Beto O’Rourke, but cooler and less gay. In fact, he’s the kind of guy you could have a beer with, and take your shirts off cause you’ll get more chicks.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/18/matthew-mcconaughey-leaves-door-open-to-run-for-texas-governor/
Banned Hipster 
“Matthew McConaughey is like Beto O’Rourke, but cooler and less gay. In fact, he’s the kind of guy you could have a beer with, and take your shirts off cause you’ll get more chicks.”
That’s just good writing.
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Did Letterman’s peeps write the “shirts off” zinger for Matt Damon? Matt apparently wrote a few screen plays, so maybe he does his own material, who knows.
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McConaughey would be “a lot cooler” [McConaughey voice] than previous actor pols like Reagan, Ventura, Schwarzenegger, Trump.
With Reagan, they kind of played it straight. While his backers and handlers no doubt liked his acting chops, the spin to the public was “Isn’t it crazy to think that the President was once (long ago) an actor?” With Ventura and Schwarzenegger their celebrity status was more explicitly part of the appeal. Then Trump the former WWE heel and reality TV star took it to a postmodern level, breaking the fourth wall all the time to talk to his constituents about…his TV ratings!
In the linked article, McConaughey, speaking of Trump (and by extension himself), notes that if you have money and fame, you have a good chance of being elected. A good, exploitable insight.
But it is reasonable to wonder, why the hell would McConaughey (or Trump) want to enter “the broken business” of politics? Is the combination of narcissism, boredom, and patriotism really enough motivation? Actors are famously powerless, taking orders from directors and producers. They don’t really have the “power-mad” personality type.
So a question becomes, who are McConaughey’s producers and what’s their angle?
I agree with your astute assessment that he has lots of the correct liberal macro opinions with a more conservative (butch?) persona than the Betos and Buttigieges of the Democratic Party. McConaughey has a lot of the right ingredients to appeal to gentile sensibilities.
Which makes him pretty useful. He could be a kinder gentler Republican, shilling for Likud or other interests. Or he could be a Democrat, trying to sell the new global normal in a package more palatable to patriotic white men (and their wives). Or he could just focus on making the new “face coverings” seem sexy.
Subtly or overtly, slowly or quickly, and as a member of ANY political party, McConaughey could be useful in the project to turn Texas blue, should he be so inclined.
(And while I agree with you Hipster that Republicans are stupid and liberal hipster racism is the way forward, most of the people who want to flip Texas blue aren’t motivated by a love of the white Christian voters of that state. Quite the contrary, actually.)
Anyway, I guess McConaughey has a political future if he wants one. But having been enlightened by you on the topic of Trump, I’m curious if you have any thoughts, Hipster, even if just speculative, on who McConaughey’s backers might be and what their angle might be.
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@Charlie
“the project to turn Texas blue”
Who cares if Texas turns blue?
“who McConaughey’s backers might be and what their angle might be.”
I get the impression that McConaughey is auditioning backers right now, in the same way that a pro ball player tries out for various teams waiting to be recruited.
As to why he’s getting into politics? Why not? It seems the logical next step for an actor, and he is setting his kids up to be politicians in the future, which is probably a lot more stable of a job than Hollywood actor. As Malachi here points out, there is likely not much of a future for “Hollywood actors” – that job has peaked.
In the 1970’s, being a Rock Star like Jimmy Page was the greatest job in the world. The Internet came along and took all the money out of Pop Music and Social Media has made everyone a quasi-celebrity, thus cheapening the Celebrity Coin itself.
There will never be another Jimmy Page. There are guys working at the mall right now who can play guitar better than Jimmy Page ever could, but it doesn’t matter because “Rock Star” is a career deader than “Buggy Whip Manufacturer.”
But there is a need for good looking people to appear on camera, on set in a Legislature or Governor’s manion, reading the PR release about some newly introduced legislation written by a K Street lobbying firm.
McConaughey isn’t doing “politics” in the sense people who pretend politics are serious see it – he is talking about “civility” and “what it means to be an American” etc. – basically, the politics of a High School Class President.
“Democracy” in the United States historically meant that the landowners would get together once a year and pick one of their own to go to Washington and work with landowners from the other states. In the era of mass media and universal franchise, it’s more about entertaining the masses than making serious decisions.
Actual decisions are made by the lobbyists and NGO’s without input from the masses, who couldn’t understand the white papers even if they could read them.
Nothing I am saying it new or even that interesting – it is the Official Ruling Ideology for the last 100 years going all the way back to the invention of the radio and Bernay’s book.
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I guess the ride ends only in death.
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Smarter and more grounded Hollywood stars realize their industry is dead and buried. The delusional ones (Tom Cruise) deny reality and cling to the old norms. In the future movies/videogames will be given away free like street entertainment. Monetary compensation for the artists/creators/musicians will be through voluntary donations from consumers. Consumers will also be able to crowdfund passion project that interest them.
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McC has the same paymaster as every (((Hollywood))) poodle along the hardLeft (Damon) to Center-Left (McC) spectrum:
Jews
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Imagine being able to just go outside and see people younger than forty.
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bannedhipster: agree that he’s auditioning. He’ll probably drive a hard bargain for an easy gig. He’s got the laziest body-language in the business. Maybe they’ll ring Austin with upscale homeless camps full of Texas Tiny Houses (already begun in a small way, in fact) and he can be Mayor of The Outer Ring. Did you see his 2-D Doritos commercial? Couldn’t be more timely, or metaphorical, as Austin rockets to become empire-central in the ‘chip’-manufacturing war ($17 billion Samsung deal in the works) and is already long the mecca for 2-D tech-personalities, arrayed like iron-filings throughout the city. McConaughey likewise shopped for just the perfect wing-man-bodyguard years ago (while scoping-out Austin for nesting purposes I suppose); purpose likely being a super smooth, uber-cool SXSW entre’, like some debutante coming-out thing. He found his eager gem in Pirate Joe, a well-known homeless journalist who gladly shepherded him to all the hip niches of that extravaganza. Nothing like sheep-dipped street cred for what’s coming down the pike I suppose. How DO THEY PLAN to manage the “man overboard” class-war to come?
He’s probably shopping musicians too. Rick Perry had Ted Nugent. I’m guessing Jack White in his country incarnation; bridging the rust-belt with the cotton-belt. He’s done some gigs with Loretta Lynn, so if they can prop her up for a few more years, who knows, maybe they’ll be doing fundraisers at the Paramount. Squeeze one last heehaw out of the fading Medicare set. Alternatively, there’s Mike Barfield, who does a hell of a Motown Review when he’s not kicking-out the hay-seed standards at The Continental Club.
Off topic – Jimmy Page got booed off-the-stage at Olympia Stadium in Detroit on LZ’s first US tour. It was funny and embarrassing at the same time. He sat down on the edge of the stage after the first set with a 12-string acoustic and was playing some sweet angelic-stuff, and it only took him a couple of songs to get the fact that it was basically a Mitch Ryder crowd and most in it had a taste for Jimmy McCarty licks. On the next year’s tour it was bottle-rockets hitting the stage. We must have had some kind of reputation back then. I always chalked it up to too many years of putting up with factory work and assholes everywhere you went: white, black and indifferent ones. Then I learned about Zionism
I got a James LaFonde view of the world these days. Interesting thing, my mother (Italian) used to say it’s always the Jews who leave a neighborhood first. I’ve seen that phenomenon everywhere I’ve lived. They fuck up the demographic and culture, and then move along to greener pastures. If you don’t see it in real time, you can see it easily in the past-tense, plus a little reading. I’d love to see the Chinese eat them alive in their little 6-square mile multicultural-shtetl called downtown Detroit. I’m awaiting Tall Ships sailing down the Detroit River spraying liquid fentanyl in a modern replay of the Opium Wars, taking down that false-construct like the Airmen dropping sleep-bombs in the old British movie Shape of Things to Come. From what I hear, they’re already doing it quietly through their middle-men in the Sackler family, so I wonder if they’ve buried the sword in some way. It’s similar to China White in Vietnam and Chou Enlai’s observations back then.
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