Media Landscape Blurs Celebrity Culture And Politics

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/03/2026) Lights, cameras, glitz and glam: Surprise! It isn’t Hollywood, it’s politics.

Politicians and celebrity have walked hand-in-hand since George Washington first led the nation, but the lines between celebrity and politicians seem increasingly blurred as politics seems to have taken a place in popular culture.

“What we’re seeing is about how politics is moving into the exact same kind of visibility that film or music celebrities have traditionally been in,” said Tracy Lamourie, celebrity publicist and founder of Lamourie Media.

Lamourie said politicians on social media have a lot more in common with celebrities now, because they have to get on the public stage and be a public figure. They are people that are listened to by others, but may be more civic-minded than the average actor, musician or sports figure.

“They used to say politics was Hollywood for ugly people. That’s not a Hollywood thing I heard. I remember hearing that back in the political days,” she said.

In the early years of her career, she worked with campaigns before getting into publicity.

Lamourie said the recent TMZ call for Congressional pictures, like those of U.S. Reps. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland) and John James (R-Shelby Township), was a way for most people to feel like they have real access to something behind the scenes of the lives of politicians by being the reporter themselves.

She said it seemed as if the chaos coming from federal politics had reached a point where even the tabloids are asking about accountability for politicians. That was a large difference from the lives of celebrities, where the people behind the scandals could get hurt or personal lives torn apart, but with politics there are consequences for other people.

She said it seemed like politics was taking on the veneer of a reality show, with celebrity scandal actually rearing up. She pointed to Kristi Noem as an example.

The case could also be made for the scandals happening in the Michigan Senate race.

The idea of celebrity itself has changed, and Lamourie said that is whomever the audience says it is. In a media landscape with tons of options, someone could be sitting next to a celebrity and never know.

She said gone were the days when everyone knew who the celebrities were, like the Beatles, Madonna, or Elton John.

“I always joke that they’re people with good publicists, but they laugh too when I say that, because they know it’s true,” she said.

She said everyone has a platform on social media and the rise of social media influencers has been elevated by advertising brands so they are seen as celebrities just as much as an actor in Hollywood.

She said politics needed to regain the gravitas that it had in the past and the slide into pop culture wasn’t helping put seriousness where it needed to be.

“It’s all some big game now, but also not a game because it is serious,” she said.

She said people had already lost respect for politics writ-large, because of how “cartoonish” some of the antics were getting to capture the attention of people who were not paying attention in the first place.

Western Michigan University Political Professor John Clark said we live in a celebrity culture and for people not fully engaged in politics, they are more likely to be tuned into the various people with a claim to fame and politicians can end up using those people to win votes, establish name recognition or break into audiences that wouldn’t otherwise be paying attention.

“The fractured media landscape creates more opportunities for candidates to do that, because there are so many different ways to connect with folks, and particularly to connect with targeted audiences,” Clark said.

He said people running for national office look to get on a national show, or local candidates could seek out a local podcast, but the days of media gatekeepers are gone with the wind.

He said being connected to a celebrity also could have some vanity aspects as well, because being able to hob-nob with the likes of Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, Oprah, or Taylor Swift was just a cool story for some people.

Clark said while the celebrity that is at the top of pop culture may change, it hasn’t changed that politicians have been using pop culture and celebrity to connect with voters for ages.

“Thirty years ago, it was (Bill) Clinton going on Arsenio (Hall), because that was the avenue and for the demographic that he was concerned about,” he said.

He said candidates these days need to expand their coalition, but also need to know the audience of where they are going. He pointed to if a Democratic candidate were to go on Fox News, they would have to know that they might not be winning the support of those people, but could win more support from their own side.

“That’s what skilled campaign managers are about. That’s what they’re trying to help candidates understand and to leverage,” Clark said.

In the end, politicians shouldn’t be blinded by the glitz and glam of celebrity culture, because what they were doing with governance should be serious, he said.

The ability to get the message out to a wider audience was useful, but it came down to the substance of that message.

"Being a celebrity, whether it’s taking advantage of one’s own celebrity status as a candidate or trying to piggyback off the celebrity of others, that’s not a substitute for being a serious candidate. If that’s all you are, then that’s not very much,” Clark said.