Rock stars, movie stars, these people are entertainers. We allow them to entertain us for a while. If they are sufficiently amusing, we might splurge a bit more and buy a few bucks worth of their entertainment. In days gone by, these same individuals would certainly not be considered as the intelligencia.
So Don Henley gets booed, and he makes some wise-acre comment about how there is no room for political discussion anymore. Guess what, Don; those people paid for you to entertain them, not open your liberal yap and vomit out praises for a seditious traitor.
You know what is odd? These same whiners who decry conservative values also whine about how the internet, MP3 burners, DVD burners, etc., are eating away their livelihood. Guess what, Liberal Hollywood; those very people who are stealing away billions of dollars of intellectual property annually are your own spawn, you Marxist slime! You taught those people to hate authority, to hate their country, to hate the military, to hate the rich, to hate capitalism. And guess what? They do!
If you look at the entertainment industry, be it music, film, TV, whatever, it is, ironically, one of the most capitalistic industries out there. You've got a huge under class -- the struggling artist -- and an embedded upper class -- the superstar celebrities, directors, et.al. -- and a small middle class of cameramen, audio engineers, et.al. The economic rift between the upper and lower classes is greater than it is in general society.
The industry has a culture of keeping the under class down: "You've got to pay your dues before you sing the blues" and other cliches are an opiate to those yearning to hit the superstar lottery. Stories abound about entire bands living in a single apartment trying to break into the biz; the casting couch; actors and actresses getting into porn to try to get a break; and on and on.
When a star finally is born, there are hundreds just like them that tried and didn't make it. Those that did reach superstardom know what it took to get there and surmise that the entire world is just like that. All corporations must be like the big movie corporations where people are to be used and thrown away like toilet paper. The irony of it all is that the industry is behind the times--the rest of us have progressed beyond the sweatshop business model and are quite happy with what we have accomplished. In reality, it's the entertainment industry that needs reform, not the rest of society!
Will the industry reform? I don't think it's looking good. Look at the RIAA and the complete mess they've made of music downloading. The music industry is the model of an apartheid system--sheer force is used to keep those beneath the Designated Powers in line. You either play their game or you'll feel their wrath. It's tough to crack a corrupt and ingrained culture like that.