She’s a fiction writer. She may be very talented (I’ve never read her work and can’t legitimately comment) but her opinion is just an opinion. Why it should matter more than the opinion of anyone else is unclear. Did we have celebrities when this country was founded? If not, how did anyone ever decide who to vote for?
Well, there was Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, George Washington, Lighthorse Harry Lee, and the Boothe family. But a lot of the ‘characters’ were probably more local, given the speed of communications. I imagine the telegraph enabled the rise of celebrity to a large extent.