"THE CULTURE GAME MATTERS": INSIDE THE BUILDING OF BERNIE'S GRASSROOTS CELEBRITY ARMY

[Uncle Joe]

Kim Gordon is best known as the preternaturally cool art-world fixture, post-punk icon, and bassist of the sadly disbanded indie-rock institution Sonic Youth. Now you can add another identifier to that list: Bernie Sanders surrogate. “Don’t be afraid to #feelthebern this movement is for all of us,” Gordon wrote in a February 16 Instagram post. She was wearing a white T-shirt that paired Sanders’s name with the signature four-bar logo of the classic hardcore band Black Flag. Her accessories included a large “Unidos con Bernie” button and a clipboard of Sanders paraphernalia. The post got about 32,000 likes. “I just found my grey one from last election,” replied Chan Marshall, the musician known as Cat Power, referring to the Bernie Black Flag shirt.

Gordon’s Instagram, which has more than 303,000 followers, has been almost exclusively devoted to Bernie content over the past few weeks. It’s filled with snaps of poll results and field-office messaging and canvassing expeditions and suchlike. “join me knocking doors for @berniesanders in SFV this Sunday!” reads the caption to a photo of Gordon sandwiched between Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Sign up at link in bio and find events near you at events.berniesanders.com.” As the 67-year-old, recently converted Berner told me the other day from Los Angeles, where she has lived for the past several years, “My daughter’s been really supportive of the Brooklyn bail fund, and she’ll often post a picture of herself and say, donate. I think selfies can work in that way.”

(snip)

Indeed, out of all the candidates who were screaming at one another on a Nevada debate stage Wednesday night, Sanders is the one who appears to have officially captured the cool-kid coalition. Hip-hop stars Cardi B and Killer Mike teamed up with his campaign to create viral YouTube videos. Another such production, focused on Sanders’s “Medicare for all” platform, is forthcoming from the groundbreaking model-actor Hari Nef. Ariana Grande beamed out an endorsement photo to her more than 70 million Twitter followers, and Emily Ratajkowski gave Sanders her blessing in a video shared with the 25 million-something people who gawk at her on Instagram. The Strokes, Bon Iver, and Vampire Weekend have all generated A-list publicity with their performances at Bernie 2020 events, and Rob Delaney and David Cross have been bombarding their Twitter peeps with near non-stop Bernie boosting. Here’s Chloë Sevigny calling Sanders “punk as fuck” in a Guardian interview, Chan Marshall posing with the 78-year-old Democratic Socialist senator on Instagram, and Boots Riley trumpeting his Sanders support in an epic Twitter thread. “I have never voted for a candidate in my life,” he wrote Tuesday in the first of a 33-tweet series. “But I will be voting for Bernie Sanders.”

Sanders also has the usual cabal of lefty legacy celebs in his corner, the Susan Sarandons and Tim Robbinses and Cynthia Nixons of the world. On Tuesday, Neil Young took to his own website to endorse Sanders in the kicker of a scathing anti-Trump screed. (“One of your opponents has the answers I like.…His initials are BS. Not his policies.”) And John Cusack is another bold-faced name who has effectively turned his Twitter feed into a real-time virtual campaign rally. “They just all agreed on @cnn that Bernie Sanders was the big winner tonight, that he’s the frontrunner,” Cusack tweeted on the heels of Tuesday’s debate. “He’s gonna roll through Nevada.”

(snip)

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/inside-the-building-of-bernies-grass-roots-celebrity-army

[George II]

1. Celebrities aren't "grassroots", they're elites and many even "Hollywood elites".

[msongs]

2. MILLIONAIRE CELEBRITIES FOR BERNIE LOL - oh sorry for shouting nt