Celebrities Get Involved

Sometimes in our political system, celebrities get involved as we have seen with more famous cases like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey teaming up to get Obama's campaign messages out. Celebrities also are active when it comes to causes. Locally, the mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, held a press conference to address the issues heath care workers in the city are experiencing. Many caregivers are being intimidated by higher up hospital executives not to organize themselves, suffer through low wages and poor health care for themselves. During the press conference, many of these hospital workers and their supporters advocated for better benefits to support their families. The interest group, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been working to help these individuals. However, at a local level, Mayor Menino has worked the influence of his office onto the issue as well. While this is all well and good, sometimes even a local, well respected and well liked elected official does not create as much of a media frenzy as say, a celebrity like Ben Affleck who was also present at the press conference. The room where the press conference was held was packed with reporters and the fact that Ben Affleck was there seemed to generate more power then all the hospital workers and union supporters combined. Affleck isn't even in the health care industry, as many of us already know - I don't think he has even played a doctor in a movie, but the sheer fact that he is a celebrity, helped to push the hospital workers' issue to the forefront and commanded a high demand for attention.