Ashley Judd at the Indy Car 500 in 2011.
Many of us thought we would leave "We Saw Your Boobs" in February, dreaming ever so foolishly that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey would host every award show for all times. But the obnoxious Seth McFarlane Oscar meme returned, in the form of a Daily Caller tally that totaled all the times we saw actress and potential Senate candidate Ashley Judd's bare chest:
"We are used to knowing just about everything there is to know about serious political candidates. But will Judd be the first potential senator who has — literally — nothing left to show us?"
The Internet backlash to the article was swift and brutal—taking on the sexism, the double standard, and the outright ridiculousness of the post. (And right on cue, there was also a backlash to the backlash.) Whether you were amused, outraged, or indifferent to the Daily Caller article, it will unlikely be the last time Judd's Hollywood past is used against her, if she does indeed decide to run for office.
Judd is not the first entertainer to contemplate a political career. Sonny Bono, George Murphy, Fred Grandy, Fred Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, of course, Ronald Reagan, successfully made the transition from entertainment to public office.
[DNC 2012: Judd Talks About Possible Run for Political Office]
"Their job is being able to sell a role or a message and to do that you have to be able to articulate yourself and capitalize on your personality," says Alan Schroeder, a professor at Northeastern University's School of Journalism and author of Celebrity-in-Chief: How Show Business Took Over the White House. "Innately, [entertainers] have a lot of those skills because that's what they've be doing in their entertainment careers."
"Film stars have the advantage of working with people who will put them in front of the camera and give them their talking points. Reagan was very good at that," says Burton W. Peretti, professor at Western Connecticut State University and author of The Leading Man: Hollywood and the Presidential Image. "Policy is very different than mastering a script." And even Reagan took some digs for his movie star cred. His California gubernatorial rival, Pat Brown, famously compared Reagan's acting career to that of John Wilkes Booth, in a campaign ad.
"One of the challenges for any entertainer who makes that leap into politics [is that] they have to overcome their past, not just capitalize it," says Schroeder. "They have things they have to prove [that] your average candidate would not."
One such hurdle is convincing voters they're not just Hollywood hacks hungry for a new kind of fame, but concerned, policy-oriented public servants—"that you're not a serious person or that you're just capitalizing your fame as a stepping stone into office," as Schroeder describes it.
[OPINION: Should Ashley Judd Run for Senate?]
"Actors are not used to having to undergo the level of scrutiny that politicians do," says Schroeder, particularly in terms of their private lives. What is OK in Hollywood—multiple marriages, a partying past—is not always accepted in Washington.
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