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*Sarah Silverman greets Bernie Sanders after opening a rally in Los Angeles. 13 August, 2015. Credit: Bernie 2016/Youtube

Celebrity input in political campaigns is usually a sideshow. The issues affecting the rich and famous are seldom the same issues affecting average working Americans.

That’s not to say celebrity endorsements don’t matter—they do, America is a celebrity culture. But an issue-based campaign is considerably more important. Bernie Sanders has elevated the discourse among Democrats, something the Republicans can only hope to hear about on E! News.

But in predictable conservative outrage, Fox News and Breitbart jumped on the Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon for admitting to the Hollywood Reporter that her fellow celebrities are reluctant to endorse Bernie Sanders for fear of reprisal from the Hollywood elite.

“You know, there's a lot of people I've talked to who are afraid,” she said. "They say 'I am definitely supporting him, but I'm afraid to come out' because either I am woman and I don't want to get shamed — because that has been a big part of what the response has been — or they say, 'I am just waiting to see what happens.'"

Sarandon’s words get at two issues. The explicit issue is sexism, something which the mainly white and bourgeois feminist crowd like Gloria Steinem have exacerbated by urging women support Hillary Clinton while ignoring her awful record on poor and minority women; the implicit is a fear of backlash from the Hollywood elite which is inextricably linked with the Democratic establishment. Both are sincere and important issues—but guess which one the conservative media took up?

Fox News will take any chance to bash “Hollywood liberals” and at the same time ignore issues of women’s rights. It is their mission as chosen by the white christian god.

Lest we forget, however, failed-movie-star-turned-politician Ronald Reagan, the conservative hero who was propelled to governor of California largely on the support of Hollywood types.

Hillary Clinton’s connection with the Hollywood establishment is largely financial. She has raised more than $11 million in campaign contributions to her super PACs from well known Hollywood donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Reagan on the other hand, used the celebrity gained from his years in Hollywood to galvanize conservative voters fearful of an America in which rights are afforded all peoples, not just white christian capitalists. The “shining city on a hill” guy even used his knowledge of Hollywood to narc on suspected communists during the McCarthy witch-hunt.

Both Hillary and Ronald have this in common: their anti-welfare approach to politics left millions of Americans in the lurch while contributing to racist stereotypes—“welfare queens” and “super-predators.”

The main difference between them? Reagan is dead (al-hamdilallah).

In contrast to Clinton, Bernie Sanders has raised only $218,599 from the Hollywood world.

Nevertheless Sanders’ celebrity endorsements are in fact varied and plentiful. The Artists and Cultural Leaders for Bernie Sanders website lists over a hundred supporters, among them Dead Kennedy’s frontman Jello Biafra, comedian and author Margaret Cho, Flea, contemporary artist Shepard Fairey (remember what he did for Obama?) and comedian Sarah Silverman.

The commonality between all these artists?

They tout Sanders’ focus on a real and principled progressive platform, the continuity of his activism over decades and his refusal of corporate money.

So Sarandon’s support of Sanders on Twitter is a disavowal of Clinton’s hawkish neoliberalism and support for the progressive candidate in reality, not some self-hating expression of her womanhood.

“I don’t vote with my vagina,” she tweeted. “It’s so insulting to women to think that you would follow a candidate JUST because she’s a woman.”

“HRC doesn’t rep my interests, @BernieSanders does. Simple as that,” added Sarandon.

In a separate interview at the Thinking Cup, a Boston coffee shop, she explains that the prospect of a female president has always been exciting to her. When Clinton first ran for office “Of course I was behind a woman,” she said. But when Clinton authorized the Iraq War “I broke up with her ... I expected so much more of her as a woman.”

Women’s issues have without a doubt been neglected and even trampled on by the GOP. There is a Texas law up in the Supreme Court right now called the Texas Omnibus Abortion Bill, or HB 2, which would effectively close nearly every abortion clinic in Texas because of a stipulation over the width of hallways. It is sexist and it needs to be voted down. There is absolutely no denying this.

But the point is that Bernie Sanders is more likely to defend women as president—women means all women i.e. women of color, poor women, immigrant women, pregnant women, etc.—whereas president Hillary Clinton is more likely to defend women who look and sound like her.

As Sarah Silverman put it to Bill Maher on Real Time on 4 March, “[Bernie Sanders] has been on the right side of history at every turn. Not along with history, not when it becomes popular, but before it’s popular.”

“Hillary was my candidate, I like Hillary ... it’s just that an alternative came along.”

