A gig’s a gig, I guess

Some of you are no doubt old enough to remember the day, many years ago – way back in 2015 -  when Donald J. Trump famously came down the escalator. Even if you recall the descent, the pithy “they’re rapists” speech, you may not be aware that many of the folks cheering him on were paid actors. This was before enough folks were heeding the Trumpian dog whistle clarion call  - enough so that Trump no longer has to pay for rabid adulation, which is probably a bad thing for the country but a good thing for actors, given Trump’s reputation for stiffing folks he’d hired. (Pink Slip covered this matter here.)

There’s been so much water under the Bridge Over the River Stress since then that I hadn’t thought much about this incident. Until I saw an article on someone – a New Orleans energy company? a shadow entity acting on their behalf? a shadow entity acting on someone else’s behalf - having hired actors to show up, wearing bright orange tee-shirts that read “Clean Energy. Good Jobs. Reliable Power.” at a hearing to support the building of a power plant.

The purpose of the hearing was to gauge community support for the power plant. But for some of those in the crowd, it was just another acting gig.

At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry.

“It was very shady, very secretive, especially when we got paid. They literally paid us under the table.”

They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.

“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.

He said he thought he was going to shoot a commercial. “I’m not political,” he said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.” (Source: The Lens/NOLA)

The actors were also required to sign NDA’s stating that they wouldn’t reveal that they were paid for their show of support.

I don’t know any actors, but I know people who do. And I know plenty of poets and writers. So I know that making a living at your craft can be tough. One day, walking around my neighborhood, I saw a fellow in painter’s whites walking into a building carrying a ladder. He looked familiar. Then I realized where I’d recognized him from. I’d seen him in a play the weekend before.

If you want to be something other than a starving artist/musician/poet/actor, best to keep your day job.

But a gig’s a gig, I guess. So it’s hard to blame actors for grabbing a few bucks for a walk-on or, better yet, a more lucrative speaking role. And showing up to shill for a power plant – even if it’s going to spew pollution all over its surrounds (and I have not idea whether that’s the case here) – isn’t the same as getting paid to show up at, say, an American Nazi Party rally, or an incel convention. Me? I like to think I wouldn’t have taken this sort of gig. Not that I’ve been offered, but I wouldn’t write copy for the American Nazi Party or an incel convention. Something more innocuous, the writer equivalent of being asked to wear the orange shirt? If I thought about it, I probably wouldn’t take the gig. But I might. So I’m not blame/shaming the actors.

But how colossally shitty of Entergy – the Big Easy energy company supposedly involved here, and the entity that would benefit from permission granted for the new power plant – or whoever it was that actually involved themselves in this bit of fakery. Entergy claims it wasn’t them and that they’re investigating. Whether it was Entergy or, for all we know, Scott Pruitt and the EPA, it’s a nasty sort of business. Especially given that some power plant opponents claim that their (legitimate) supporters couldn’t get into the hearing because the fakes were taking up the seats and monopolizing the microphone.

Apparently, this sort of grassroots trickery is not all that rare. It’s even got its own name:

Paying people to create the illusion of grassroots support is known as astroturfing.

And there are even companies that specialize in it.

“There are hundreds of such firms across the country,” [UCLA professor Edward Walker] told CNN in January. “By my estimate, around 40 percent of the Fortune 500 appears on the client list of at least one such firm.”

Swell.

A gig’s a gig, I guess. But I like the actor who works as a housepainter better than the orange shirt brigade out there astroturfing.