Dave Matthews, Kanye West, and Sheryl Crow are all performing like monkeys for VIPs in Denver this week. Also expected to be skulking around Denver this week are Ben Affleck, Josh Brolin, Annette Bening, Spike Lee, Anne Hathaway, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron, according to AFP. Oh, and Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi are performing before and after Obama's acceptance speech, at that stadium! Soooo many celebrities! Because America loves its celebrities, except that it also despises and resents them. You know how most of America's problems are caused not by the disastrous failure of government over the last like 30 years but by, uh, Tim Robbins? Yes, of course you do! So do Republicans, who learned long ago that the only thing America loved more than obsessively consuming pop culture object is loudly decrying the creators of those objects as unAmerican queers. The fact that Hollyweird (along with the music and television weird-ustries) caters directly and scientifically to every desire of every American demographic does not mean that anyone actually likes famous people, because, obviously, they are misanthropic wealthy blinkered assholes whose lives bear no resemblance to the lives of their audiences. Which is true! They are! Just like politicians and their constituencies! Except no one knows who their Representative is, and everyone knows who Ben Affleck is. He is the Vince Vaughan who isn't funny! And then it gets really odd, because even someone like Bruce Springsteen-who is unreservedly beloved by basically all white people older than 30-suddenly becomes a loathed example of garish flashy wealth when he sings a song for a Democrat. But, you may say, if you actually like Bruce Springsteen it is patently obvious that he has always sang bleeding heart songs about losers betrayed by their countries! But he also sings about cars which cause the Global Warming, which is a myth except when liberal celebrities have big houses, and then it is real. So. Now Obama has to "stay away" from these famous people, except for the ones singing to him on TV, and also George Clooney has issued a press release announcing that he's never texted Barack Obama. George Clooney, in case you are unfamiliar with him, is basically the single most well-liked man in America, which is why his support for Barack Obama is the kiss of death. Of course, if you are a Republican, you get to have the support of shitty country acts who are massively, hugely, insanely popular across the entire country except in the places where journalists live, so they don't count as "celebrities." Get it? Photoshop: Steve Dressler