For many celebrities, the election of Barack Obama represents their best chance to influence policy after eight years in the cold, and they're not waiting for his permission to seek change.
After all, their money and campaign support helped move him into the White House. So few would be surprised to see celebrities starting to demand results, even as the president finds his agenda overtaken by the nation's overwhelming economic problems.
Like few other issues roiling the world these days, the enduring tragedy in the Darfur region of Sudan has engaged Hollywood types in growing numbers.
A red carpet full of celebrities are urging a faster and stronger international response -- George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, Don Cheadle and Ryan Gosling among them.
Just last week, TV and film actress Maria Bello joined a half-dozen House members at the Capitol, calling on U.S. and world leaders to press Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to rescind his order expelling 13 international humanitarian organizations from the region.
One stroke of gentle persuasion came last month from Clooney as he met with President Obama and Vice President Biden to discuss the conflict in Darfur. He brought along a digital version of 250,000 signatures collected on postcards, demanding an end to the violence.
After the meeting, Clooney lingered a while longer in Washington to appear on CNN’s “Larry King Live." Conceding that Obama and Biden have “a lot of things to do” with Iraq, Afghanistan and a free-falling economy, Clooney told King, “My job is to remind this Administration that this is one of them, and it’s very important.”
There are some indications that Clooney may have had some impact.
In his meeting, Clooney said he urged Obama to raise the level of diplomacy. Days later, administration officials confirmed that a retired Air Force pilot, Major General J. Scott Gration, who grew up in Africa, would be named a special envoy to Darfur, a role parallel to Richard Holbrooke’s in Pakistan and Afghanistan and George Mitchell’s in the Middle East. The appointment was made official last week.
It’s hard to know whether anything Clooney said or the petition signatures played a role in leading to the appointment. He was not available for comment, said his press representative, Stan Rosenfield.
“With celebrities, you get into People magazine and other sections of the newspaper and that gives you access to a much wider audience,” said Alex Meixner, director of policy and government relations for the Save Darfur coalition in Washington. “It’s tough to find metrics you can look at to quantify a celebrity’s impact.”
But it seemed apparent that Clooney’s involvement in the issue, including six trips to the region, has helped raise public awareness of Darfur beyond what it might have been, if left only to the rare journalists, like Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, who have chronicled the bloodshed for years.
Others have been engaged since well before Obama's election.
Last April in London, Damon led a group of other celebrities, including actresses Joely Richardson and Jemima Khan, in a global Day of Darfur protests, breaking toys and setting fire to children’s pictures as a way to symbolize the suffering of young people.
