This take sounds like Rowling had written Harry Potter to fulfill her dream of one day being famous and crushing transsexuals beneath her expensive heels. "When I am a billionaire author," she cackled, "I will show them all!"
Famous people are still people, and they still have opinions. Opinions you might not even agree with. Are we to exclude the famous from speaking their opinions? I would love to see how that would work, both legally and as kind of a sci-fi premise. Actors interviewed on late night shows offering only the blandest of reactions to what is said. No longer are musicians able to fund charities with their wealth, since donations are speech, as per the Supreme Court. Court battles are waged over how wealthy must be or how many Google hits are found for their name before someone is too famous to have opinions.
It lacks laser-guns and aliens, but as a very dry, Burgess-like exploration of government policy as a near-future sci-fi, it might be workable.
> This take sounds like Rowling had written Harry Potter to fulfill her dream of one day being famous and crushing transsexuals beneath her expensive heels.
First, my response was denying that the description was of a phenomenon which was in any way novel as the upthread poster claimed, it wasn’t my description.
Second, I don’t read it that way: it was simply describing that, Rowling achieved fame and then, having achieved it, used it to sell certain ideas. There was no suggestion that it was planned in advance as a strategy, or even that that use was especially prominent among her uses of the fame.
Famous people are still people, and they still have opinions. Opinions you might not even agree with. Are we to exclude the famous from speaking their opinions? I would love to see how that would work, both legally and as kind of a sci-fi premise. Actors interviewed on late night shows offering only the blandest of reactions to what is said. No longer are musicians able to fund charities with their wealth, since donations are speech, as per the Supreme Court. Court battles are waged over how wealthy must be or how many Google hits are found for their name before someone is too famous to have opinions.
It lacks laser-guns and aliens, but as a very dry, Burgess-like exploration of government policy as a near-future sci-fi, it might be workable.