Of course celebrities have the right to voice their opinions no matter how far out or goofy they may be. For example, Nikki Minaj once advised us that a friend of her cousin got the COVID-19 vaccine and his testicles swelled up and he became impotent.
The stand up comic, mixed martial arts fanatic and psychedelic adventurer Joe Rogan was laid low after after testing positive for COVID-19 and he described his use of Ivermectin to treat it.
The drug won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for its use treating the world’s poorest populations for parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis. It is also used in veterinary medicine to get rid of worms in livestock. The Food and Drug Administration says it's useless to treat COVID.
But then Rogan claims the pharmaceutical companies "are in cahoots to try and make anybody who takes this stuff look crazy. But what’s crazy is look how better I got! I got better pretty quick.” Who are you going to believe?
By the way, people should NEVER use medications intended for animals because they can be very different from those approved for humans and can be dangerous even to the point of death.
Politicians get into the act, too. Remember when President Trump advocated Hydroxychloroquine. His enthusiasm for the drug lead to some people blaming him for prompting the stockpiling of the drug and thereby limiting access to it for lupus patients and it was, according to some people, his fault that in an attempt to ward off the coronavirus, an Arizona couple in their 60s ingested chloroquine phosphate which killed the man and landed his wife in critical care. Few considered it was the couple's fault for taking advice on self-medicating from a celebrity, President or not.
Back in the day Trump had endorsements from Mike Ditka, Lil Wayne and Roseanne Barr. Then there was Joe Biden who had a cruise ship full of celebrities on his side in 2020, including Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
There are plenty of examples of celebrities advertising stuff on television, but the latest scam involved professional (American) football players the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the Los Angeles Rams wideout Odell Beckham Jr. who were handling out financial advice.
They were endorsing Bitcoins, the no. 1 cryptocurrency, and announced their plans to take portions of their salaries in the cryptocurrency during a time when Bitcoins hit an all-time high. Not long after Bitcoins took a nasty dive.
Cryptocurrencies have been moving in tandem with stocks, which have been falling as investors have been selling risk assets like technology stocks. i.e. Bitcoin investing is like any other investing...you take your risks. However, it seems wiser to take advice from a professional financial advisor and not professional football players who are getting paid to hawk a product or service.
Being rich and famous does not make a person smart or worthy of spewing advice on medicine and politics and everything in between and much of it can prove to be downright harmful.
In many cases these people are fear mongers who promote anything to make a dollar. They have no idea if it works, or if what they are saying has any truth to it. On the other hand, some really do believe that they know more than the rest of us and we should listen to them no matter how ridiculous their advice may be.
How smart are the celebrities? The following quotes reveal a lot and Madonna said it best when she said, "Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion."
Shaquille O’Neal
Reporter: “Did you visit the Parthenon during your trip to Greece?”
O’Neal: “I can’t really remember the names of the clubs we went to.”
Kanye West
"I actually don't like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don't. I do not like to think at all."
Britney Spears
"I’ve never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that’s very popular out there in Africa."
Paris Hilton
"No, no, I didn’t go to England, I went to London."
Jaden Smith
“If everybody in the world dropped out of school, we would have a much more intelligent society.”
Christina Aguilera
"So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?"
Brooke Shields
"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost an important part of your life."
Mitt Romney (politician)
"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love."
Dan Quayle (politician)
"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system!"
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