商业报道:好来坞明星为奥巴马助选（在线收听）

Celebs invade the DNC 好来坞明星为奥巴马拉票

Hollywood stars including Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Chevy Chase traveled to Denver to show support for Obama.

Well, it looks like the Hollywood left their hills and are flew on over to Denver for the DNC. I’m talking big names, there are Ben Affleck, we are talking Shawn Pan, Steven Spielberg. These were guys with a lot of money, they are backing Obama it looks like. With us now, Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune Magazine. Literally I mean the celebrities and droves at the DNC, what is going on?

They went from the hills of the mountains, (The hills of mountains.) there they go. (That is better than mine.) that’s no, it’s just adding on to, yours is good. Well, listen, these conventions have become sort of mega what, star kind of events. No. 1, I think that you know, politics and celebrity have been merging in our society for quite a well now, and so as we seeing more and more celebrities going these conventions, it’s not a big surprise, No. 1. No. 2, you are gonna see more celebrities at democratic convention, and republican one because let’s face at Hollywood, is a left-wing democrat libber town, there is no question about that. And you know, you see things like the White House correspondent’s dinner becoming more and more sort of like a red carpet event, (Yeah.) this is another point to make about these two worlds colliding. On the other hand, you know really is some business said has been done in terms of Hollywood, and politicians, as you know, Poppy I mean, Hollywood is a business, so they have business interest so they have to look after theses things.

I gonna ask, is this the power of O, Obama and Oprah it seems, people follow Oprah wherever she goes, whatever she says, now there are a lot of them backing Obama. I mean, is this, this is the first we’ve seen with this much celebrity backing of a candidate, isn’t it.

Yeah, I think that’s probably true, and I mean maybe it is like, you know, Chicago becoming the new LA, I don’t really think so. Listen, you know, they’ve always said that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, so maybe the beautiful people are coming here, they will give me a little show. But I think you know, when you talk about the real business’s going on, first of all, a lot of these stars will tell you that they really are politically concerned, I mean, someone like Shawn Pan, L. M., really has been involved, the ethnic same thing, these guys have been doing this quite well now. But also you know, in terms of their bosses, the studio chiefs, and the moguls, and the producers, they actually, you know, concern the backing involved on the political process for a couple of real practical reasons. No. 1, you know, censorship, No. 2, tax breaks for deals, dealing with copyright issues when it comes to China. So you know, if you wanna have a cocktail party and get the politicians there, not just Obama, maybe the vice president, maybe the future secretary of state,etc . You know, it might not be a bad idea to show them and let them know that you got some ideas, and that what you get your foot involved in the door there.

Ok, you know, on the foot set that though, can it ever be banned for a candidate, is it banned for Obama to have all of these celebrities backing that is making the front pages of tabloids and you know, this gossip magazines if you will because, remember that McCain ad, he’s the biggest celebrity in the world. I mean they are using it against him.

And then Paris Hilton came right back, of course it did her a little video thing, you know, I think, you know, it’s kind of a delicate ballots, obviously, if you just gonna hang out, pull side the LA all the time, if you are Barack Obama, that’s not gonna work very well, and he’s very well of that of course. And of course, it can backfire for the stars as well, I mean who can forget the dickercy checks, when they came out with that song that was anti-president Bush, and you know, there are country band, a lot of audience’s reacted very very negative to that. So I think both sides have to be a little careful. You know, what can you say, you know, if you got, you know, Hollywood’s stars coming to see you though, you can’t wanna answer the door. Don’t you think?

All right, Andy, thank you very much. I appreciated it. Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune Magazine, and check out the piece about this and more by Richard S. Fortune writer is on fortune.com