Can it really be true? Can the glorious victory of Brexit have led indirectly to another consequence? Are we truly on the point of losing Katie Hopkins to America? If so, we are living through the most ballsed-up afterparty since the Treaty of Versailles.
Yet the indications seem clear. Brexit plus-plus-plus, as Donald Trump trailed his then only potential victory, has drawn some of Brexit’s biggest cheerleaders to try to make it in the US. According to Katie’s previous words on the matter: “If Donald Trump wins the race to the White House, I’m moving to America. Daring to bare what some people really think.” Given that someone at Trump’s formal victory speech appeared to shout “Kill Obama!”, Katie is going to have to dig deep for shock opinions yet unbared. But I’m sure she’ll scrape manfully away until she does. As she is fond of pointing out, she has “girl balls”.
On the one hand, Katie doing one to America seems wrong, as brain drain is normally a consequence of oppression or moral outrage. Searching for the commensurate historical parallel in terms of human capital flight, you would probably go for the time when Justinian shut down the Platonic Academy in Athens, and the philosophers took all their learning to Persia, while the Dark Ages set in for Europe. Try to imagine something similar here, except with Katie taking scrolls of tweets calling migrants cockroaches and whatnot.
On the other hand, we have to accept a small provincial backwater such as the UK can no longer hold Katie’s talents, and that she was always going to sign for a bigger club at some point. The US is the obvious answer. After all, the one thing this election has shown is that the US really lacks for strident and intemperate voices, and Katie would help to address that drought. Under any points-based immigration system you care to construct, she would be the right kind of immigrant. Furthermore, Trump himself once noticed Katie on Twitter, writing: “Thank you to respected columnist Katie Hopkins of DailyMail.com for her powerful writing on the UK’s Muslim problems.” Erotica to madam’s ears, no doubt.
As for what plans she has to draw adoring attention to herself as she makes the transition to a big pond, we must wait to see. Her act may need a little local fine tuning. My feeling is she’ll retire her constant refrain that fat people bring it entirely on themselves. Katie once put on four stone for a documentary designed to prove the latter point, and although I would like to see her reprise it for her new heartlands, instinct suggests she’ll not make it part of her introductory American offering.
The other big Trump question, showbiz-wise – I accept there are one or two bigger ones politically, but this is a celebrity column – is whether the UK will take delivery of celebrities fleeing his presidency. An awful lot did promise to, from Girls creator Lena Dunham, who earmarked Vancouver, saying: “I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will.” Then there was pop’s Miley Cyrus, who declared: “I am moving if he is president. I don’t say things I don’t mean!” There was even talkshow host and comedian Chelsea Handler, who stated: “I did buy a house in another country just in case. So all these people that threaten to leave the country and then don’t – I actually will leave that country.”
For what minuscule amount it’s worth, Lost in Showbiz hasn’t got a huge amount of time for celebrities pre-emptively announcing that they will deprive a country of their personages in the event of electoral disappointment. I think they should stay and fight, just like Phil Collins should have stayed when Labour won in 1997, and fought – with his drumsticks, if necessary – to give us a William Hague victory in 2001. Still, it’s no use crying over spilt milk.
Let’s turn instead to more positive thoughts. Who are the major potential celebrity gainers in all this? Which stars might do well out of Trump’s victory? As so often previously, this column’s thoughts turn to Steven Seagal. Only last week, Seagal was regarded as having picked the wrong side in a new cold war, taking Russian citizenship from Vladimir Putin, having already long functioned in Russian roles as diverse as arms firm spokesmodel and presidential aikido buddy. But now, well – all bets are off. Who would seriously rule out the On Deadly Ground legend as the ideal US ambassador to Russia? Think about it: he has all the relevant contacts, the intellectual heft to which Trump is naturally drawn, and he was straight out of the traps to congratulate the president-elect, cheering that he was “looking forward to making AMERICA great again!” Also, I think the various direct-to-app projects in which Seagal is involved could prove fairly easy to extricate himself from.
Yet Seagal wasn’t the only Hollywood notable – don’t argue with that epithet – to avoid crying into Instagram about the victory. Francis Ford Coppola described Trump as a “really practical person”, in a digression chiefly notable for the revelation that the pair had been at the same military school. This is now my favourite Hollywood/political education-based mash-up since learning that Al Gore’s Harvard roommate was Tommy Lee Jones.
Finally, as far as newly minted major celebrities are concerned, you would have to go some way to avoid the Trump progeny themselves. Needless to say, Ivanka is being touted as a future president, because the Oval Office is now basically the Iron Throne, and only families can fight for it. But for many who watched the family line up on stage alongside Trump for his victory speech, it’s all about his 10-year-old son, Barron, now. We can only hope Barbara Walters does the right thing and names Barron her Most Fascinating Person of 2016.
Oh, I know some people will point to Barron’s apparent flinch when the guy shouted “Kill Obama!”, and suggest he could grow up the Saffy-from-Ab-Fab in all this – a lone, horrified rationalist trapped in a household of emotionally incontinent narcissists. But those are people who clearly got it wrong and are still asking the wrong questions. God knows we’re all surrounded by the wrong questions. I myself have a four-year-old son who stared at Barron throughout Trump’s speech and kept asking “Why is that boy sad?” Luckily, I was on hand to correct him on his privileged stating of the obvious, and explain that if he and his lamestream buddies bothered to look at the electoral data as opposed to acting out their SJW bullshit, they would see Barron was happy and it was WHITE WOMEN who made him so. I will not raise a four-year-old elitist who fails to understand that his debunked “poor Barron” narrative is a lie that butthurt liberals can no longer tell themselves.
All in all, then, it’s shaping up to be a time of intriguing shifts in the celebrity firmament. Consider your stars in sudden flux, and stockpile emergency supplies accordingly.
