So once again the familiar refrain of celebrities threatening to flounce off should some candidate they oppose win, and once again the rest of us are reminding them not to let the door him them on the way out.
This time around it’s the UK elections and vile tabloid columnist Katie Hopkins has said she’ll leave the UK if Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister, something which some Labour Parliamentary candidatesimmediately seized uponas an added benefit of a Labour win.
Will she actually go? Probably not, more’s the pity. In fact, of all the many celebs over the years who have announced that they’d leave their respective countries should the election go against them, has **anyone **ever actually gone?
One celebrity who was unfairly accused of this was Alec Baldwin. While he openly supports the Democrats, he never said he would leave the country if Bush was elected. If was Kim Basinger, who was then married to Baldwin, who said that Baldwin “might leave the country if Bush is elected president.” The next day, Baldwin said he had no plans on leaving the country regardless of who was elected (“I never said I’d leave the country”).
In the US, you normally hear this sort of nonsense from vapid Hollywood celebs, threatening to flee the country if the Republican candidate wins. I distinctly remember Whoopie Goldberg threatening this if George W Bush won (I don’t recall if it was his original election or the re-election). AFAIK, every last one of them still lives the US, so Canadians probably don’t need to worry about being innundated with self-aggrandizing nitwits if we get President Rubio in 2017.
I’ve heard him discuss this. IIRC, according to him he’d be asked to appear on a right wing talk show and he said he would if the show would dispel the rumor and confirm that he never said anything like it. They refused because it made better fodder to have that out there as “true.”
Tina Fey talks about this in her book. She had done an interview for TV Guide(?) with a friend from her theater days. After she thought the interview was over and they were just hanging out, she made a joke about “I’d move to the moon if Palin and McCain were elected.” It appeared in the interview and was presented as a serious statement.
It’s usually in the opposite political direction in the UK, with celebs threatening to leave if Labour get in. Phil Collins did move to Switzerland, but I’m not sure that it was actually anything to do with the election result.
Art Buchwald had a column 40-50 years ago about people threatening to move to Canada if the wrong guy won the election, and how every four years Canadians would be disappointed yet again when the expected influx of people from America didn’t happen.
Yeah, you hear this every so often and, fuck, I know I said similar things back in '12 about how I’d be on my way out if Romney somehow won.
The thing to remember about such threats is that they’re basically impossible to fulfill. Seriously, unless an American is phenomenally wealthy or a Ph.D in a STEM field, he or she can’t just up & move to Canada (or wherever else, really) if the sociopolitical winds start to blow the wrong way. Countries in the developed world have extremely restrictive immigration policies that basically make it impossible to move here or there unless you somehow already have an “in” (read: close family member) with your country of choice.
Hearing this stuff from celebrities is always funny though, given that they all have so much money that they really have no NEED to leave the country if a 'Pub ever becomes POTUS again.
Eh, its kind of a lame gottcha. Like complaining about all the teenage girls who didn’t really kill themselves when they weren’t allowed to go the prom or whatever. Its just hyperbole, and I doubt anyone expects it to be taken seriously even at the time.
Michael Moriarity (who I thought was great as the DA in the first few seasons of Law and Order) got into a spat with Attorney General Janet Reno, who had been criticizing violence in television. He threatened to move to Canada and then did so. According to Wiki, he described himself as a political exile for a time.
Not really the situation the OP describes, but it’s the best one I can come up with.
I think a lot of the time you don’t hear it from vapid Hollywood celebs. You hear it about vapid Hollywood celebs. I bet a lot of these rumors are like the Alec Baldwin case. The celebrity never said it but the rumor won’t die.
For example, can you actually cite where Whoopi Goldberg said this? I find lots of right wing sites that claim she said it - but none of them offer a cite.
