washingtonpost:

There’s a tendency to treat artists, as well as professional athletes, as immune from the vicissitudes of politics. Because they’re wealthy, that reasoning goes, reversals of policy won’t really affect them. They’ll always be able to pay lawyers who can secure their legal status in the country, or afford birth control, or they live in atmospheres so rarified that they’re protected from the everyday grind of racial discrimination.

And even if artists do feel personally affected, this line of thinking continues, artists and athletes are obligated to confine themselves to entertaining. Daring to use their platforms to do or advocate for anything that might mildly perturb their fans is a violation of an unspoken contract.

This is a silly and fundamentally immature line of thinking, one that tries to shrink the roles of people who have a unique capacity to expand our thinking beyond partisan canards. If you’re so vulnerable that you can’t tolerate any opinion or action in your cultural idols that doesn’t conform exactly to your preferences, then your relationship to art is fundamentally brittle anyway.

From our culture critic @alyssarosenberg​: “Trump thinks artists owe him respect. They don’t.”