4 words Cardi B invented that need to go in the dictionary immediately
Rapper Cardi B has a lot to say. But these 4 words, she defined.
USA TODAY
When it comes to soapboxing, today’s celebrities don’t wait to be asked.
Back in the 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday and legacy we celebrate each January, was preaching — it was seen as breaking with tradition.
The stars, famously, didn’t speak out, didn’t take sides. It could cost you your career.
The celebrity participation in the civil rights movement — particularly the 1963 March on Washington — didn’t happen by accident. It was all part of King’s strategy. He himself was a star. His gravity would attract other stars.
Expressing an opinion on world affairs is considered, now, part of every star’s birthright. And that process has been vastly accelerated by social media. Everyone now grinds their axes in public. Everyone now has a “platform.”
But the stars have a bigger platform. And many are not shy about using it.
It has been argued that celebrities, having a greater audience, have a responsibility to use that power for good. There is truth to this.
It has been argued that celebrities are — often — intelligent people, who have a special awareness of world events due to their own stature on the world stage. There is truth to this, too.
It has been argued that celebrities, whatever they think they are doing, are mostly motivated by self-aggrandizement, that their activism is virtue signaling, and that they should just shut up and entertain us.
There is truth to that, too.
Whatever the case, here are some of most outspoken of the outspeakers.
Cardi B
“I don’t really put a lot of political things in my music, but I use the f— out of my platform,” Cardi, 29, told former talk-show host David Letterman. The rapper has stumped for Bernie Sanders, then Joe Biden, She has advocated for racial equality, free college tuition. “I will never turn Republican LOL,” she said on X.
Jon Voight
The onetime liberal, star of “Midnight Cowboy” and “Conrack,” is now an outspoken — very outspoken — conservative. He’s called Donald Trump “the greatest president since Lincoln,” praised Israel at its most bellicose, and accused President Barack Obama of using “a socialist Marxist teaching, and with it he rapes this nation.” All this puts him at painful odds with his liberal daughter, Angelina Jolie. “Angelina is ignorant, trapped in the Hollywood bubble, and influenced by antisemites,” Voight has said.
Mark Ruffalo
The Incredible Hulk has used his Hollywood muscle against corporate misbehavior, environmental abuse and especially Trump, whom he called “Public Enemy Number One” in 2020. “I love this country,” said the actor recently at The Golden Globes. “And what I’m seeing here happening is not America.”
Jane Fonda
“Hanoi Jane” is probably the Hollywood activist with the longest, most celebrated, and most reviled career. Women’s rights, the environment, economic justice, indigenous rights are among her many causes.
Oprah Winfrey
She’s advocated for gender equality, racial equality, obesity issues, education, journalistic responsibility and health care. You get a health plan! And you get a health plan! And you get a health plan!
George Takei
As the husband of a husband, “Star Trek’s” Mr. Sulu was an outspoken supporter of marriage equality. And as a Japanese American whose family was interred in an American concentration camp during World War II, he has a more personal reason than most for protesting Trump’s incarceration of immigrants. “I consider it my responsibility as an American citizen to actively participate, particularly because I know my childhood imprisonment — the unjust imprisonment,” he has said. “If we don’t educate our fellow Americans to the vulnerability of our democracy, how fragile it can be, then we’re not being responsible citizens.”
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys called for Trump’s impeachment in 2020. “It’s just too many lies. Too much hate, too much spin. It’s when good people do nothing, that the bad guys win.”
Ted Nugent
The “Cat Scratch Fever” rocker is equally feverish when it comes to politics. A conservative and a half, he called in 2004 for a “Nagasaki” in Iraq, is anti-government, and pro-gun rights. “I’m not in the leftist-controlled Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because of my political views, primarily my lifelong militant support of the NRA, the second amendment, and my belief that the only good bad guy is a dead bad guy,” he’s said.