In (Partial) Defense of Rock the Vote’s Nonvoters

Last month a bunch of celebrities appeared in an

unwatchably bad PSA for Rock the Vote, the record industry’s
love
child with the Democratic Party. The point of the video is that
viewers should participate in this year’s midterm elections, but
The Washington Post now
reports that at least five of the clip’s stars—Lena Dunham,
Whoopi Goldberg, Natasha Lyonne, E.J. Johnson, and Darren Criss—did
not cast ballots in the last midterms.

For this the celebs are being
damned as
hypocrites. But really, it’s perfectly rational to urge large
blocs of people to vote while not bothering to do it yourself.
Casting one ballot isn’t likely to affect the outcome of any major
election. Getting a bunch of your fans to the polls, on the other
hand, might actually have an impact. If the stars have failed as
activists, it isn’t because they don’t always vote; it’s because
their video is more likely to inspire a wave of seppuku deaths than
a great march to the polling stations.

The PSA is embedded below. Here’s a great drinking game: Try to
watch it to the end, then tally up how much liquor you downed in a
desperate effort to blot out what you were seeing. The record was
set by Mrs. Bettina Leach of Albany, New York, who passed out
halfway through the three-and-a-half-minute ad. When she came to a
few hours later, she was surrounded by seven empty bottles of rum,
a half-empty flask of rye, and—this is the scary part—an “I Voted”
sticker. (*)

(* Full disclosure: That story is not actually
true.)