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WTF? Amy Schumer voted for Cynthia Nixon after telling fans to vote for Andrew Cuomo

The comedian’s flip-flop illustrates the problem with celebrity political endorsements.

WTF? Amy Schumer voted for Cynthia Nixon after telling fans to vote for Andrew Cuomo

[Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images]

BY Joe Berkowitz1 minute read

People are still mad at Susan Sarandon. It’s been two extremely long years since she endorsed Jill Stein for president over Hillary Clinton, and a lot of people are still disproportionately upset with her. However grave a mistake endorsing Stein may seem in retrospect, at least Susan Sarandon had the courage of her convictions.

It’s anybody’s guess exactly what drove Amy Schumer’s endorsement in Thursday’s New York gubernatorial primary.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnmOADCFx1d/?taken-by=amyschumer

On Tuesday afternoon, a Schumer post on Instagram directed her 7.2M followers to vote for the establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo. The comedian expressed regret over not being able to muster a vote for progressive Democratic challenger Cynthia Nixon–but ultimately she was compelled to tell her New Yorker fans they should stick with the status quo. (Nicki Minaj made the same move, minus the contrition.)

Cut to Thursday, however, and Schumer very publicly appears to have had a change of heart.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnrTRmSlLSe

Schumer made her questionable about-face at around 3 p.m. on primary day, long after when many of the people who might possibly be influenced by her late-breaking contradiction of her previous endorsement could take that spirit to the polls.

To put it mildly, this is not at all a good look. Especially considering that Schumer is related to New York Senator Charles Schumer, which invites suspicion that the original endorsement could have been a familial favor.

It’s pretty much the opposite of having one’s cake and eating it, too: Schumer will not only incur the frosting-stain from the progressive Left of having endorsed the establishment candidate to millions of fans, along with the fiber-embedded cake crumbs of declaring–whoopsies!–that she was wrong, just after the last minute.

Like everyone else, Amy Schumer is a human being who is always evolving. The curse of being a celebrity is evolving in real time, which is why political endorsements should be ironclad, if offered at all.

Otherwise, you run the risk of being yoked to a sensual pantsuit anthem forever.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Berkowitz is an opinion columnist at Fast Company. His latest book, American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, is available from Harper Perennial. More


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