A new viral video promoting signatures for an online petition to oppose Donald Trump has come under fire for being another celebrity endorsement.
What happened in the video in question?
Humanity for Progress, which reportedly has origins as Humanity for Hilary, has released a new viral video as part of a social media campaign featuring Celebrities asking Americans to sign a petition concerning the upcoming Donald Trump presidency.
Actors and celebrities among the likes of Sally Field, Jeffrey Wright, Lea DeLaria, Rosie Perez, and Steve Buscemi appear in the video, in addition to religious figures such as Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.
The figures within the video ask viewers to sign a petition posted on the MoveOn website that would reportedly block policies that restrict the rights of “women, the LGBTQ community, people of color, immigrants and the poor,” and saying that a majority of Americans will support such an endeavor. The video also employed the hashtags, #OBSTRUCT and #StandUpForUs.
As of this writing, the petition has garnered over 2,500 signatures.
The Hollywood elite have been losing their political presence
This is hardly the first time celebrities have been vocal against Trump’s presidency. In the time before the Electoral College finally confirmed Trump’s presidency on December 19 of last year, a viral video, which featured celebrities including Martin Sheen and Debra Messing, had begged “faithless electors” to vote against Trump.
The plan was not able to hold weight, as more electors even ended up switching from Hillary Clinton than they did Trump. Added to that, celebrity support of Clinton during the actual election had also become so vocal that it has retroactively been given as a possible explanation as to why polls seemed to mistakenly believe Clinton would have won in November.
For some in the media, the action has been criticized for being another celebrity promotion that seems to be fighting a losing battle. Kelly Riddell of the Washington Post criticized the PSA in an opinion piece, where she wrote that at this point, “These celebrities have gone insane.” In addition to pointing out that celebrities were not able to make sway during the aforementioned Electoral College video, she brought up the old adage of expecting different results with repeating actions is the definition of insanity, and suggested that today’s modern celebrities are under the impression that this concept does not apply to them.
In addition to the Martin Sheen video, Riddell also mentioned a recent MTV promotion that criticized the Blue Lives Matter campaign, which had been developed to promote police safety awareness, and described the video as becoming controversial after it was accused of casual racism.
