Hollywood stars play key role for Kerry
Superstar and arch-Democrat Streisand, 62, performed with Neil Diamond for the first time in 24 years as a galaxy of Hollywood celebrities rallied in Los Angeles to raise cash for Kerry’s White House bid.
Streisand and Diamond sang their 1978 hit duet, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, bringing Kerry around $5 million in proceeds from the show at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, news reports said.
The two music icons were the concert’s top draws, but country star Willie Nelson and comedian Billy Crystal also performed, while movie stars Robert de Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck were in attendance.
Ms Streisand, who is famously coy about public appearances, retired from public performances in 2000 but has appeared to sing at Democratic Party fundraisers since then.
The mega-star wattage may help put Mr Kerry, who urged the audience to back him, back in the headlines in a week which has seen his campaign eclipsed by Democratic ex-president Bill Clinton’s new tell-all book.
The sold-out event certainly helped bolster the politician’s coffers ahead of the November 2 election, in which he hopes to unseat President George W Bush.
The 2,000 elegantly-clad audience members paid up to $25,000 a head for their tickets to the show, one of two star-studded events the Kerry camp hopes will raise up to $10m.
A second fund-raising concert is scheduled at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on July 8, featuring movie star Whoopi Goldberg, musician Jon Bon Jovi, the Dave Matthews Band and Mary J Blige.
Traditionally liberal Hollywood is seen as an important and highly visible spoke in the support network of Democratic candidates, but the reason for the star presence at yesterday’s concert was far more prosaic.
“They allow Kerry to raise a lot of money and that’s what the show is all about,” University of Southern California political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said.
Earlier yesterday, Mr Kerry, who is on an intense stumping tour aimed at convincing US voters to elect him to office, won the surprise endorsement of US tycoon and former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca, who supported Mr Bush in his 2000 campaign.
But while Mr Kerry shone with the stars, Bebitch Jeffe warned celebrity power can be a double-edged sword for Democratic politicians in the rest of the country, where swing voters can be repelled by overly-strident political messages and celebrity backing.
“In some respects stars like Barbra Streisand can be a negative force for Kerry and other Democratic candidates as she tends to get conservatives and some people outside of New York and LA riled up,” she said.
Hollywood has already rallied around liberal causes this campaign season, with a galaxy of stars turning out to give filmmaker Michael Moore a five-minute standing ovation at a recent VIP premiere of his anti-Bush movie Fahrenheit 9/11.
Stars, including Mark Wahlberg and Ashton Kutcher, rose in praise of the movie, which opened nationwide in the US on Wednesday, reflecting Hollywood’s liberal leanings.
