"Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine" - George Monbiot

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebr...

Yes if you were to apply the Mcleod Corp pyramid they would be he clueless layer, happily indoctrinating the loser layer at the behest of the sociopath top.

It was my understanding that the loser layer understands what's going on though, which should inoculate them from indoctrination. Celebrities would then be the ones who keep the clueless from becoming losers.

Well, going too deep, there are three parts of the loser layer; committed losers, future clueless, and future sociopaths. The committed losers are aware and say things like “msm has always being lying”, future clueless are aspiring influencers, and future sociopaths are just waiting for the right opportunity to advance.

Rupert Murdoch was overtly portrayed as a Bond villain in one of the late ‘90s films...

Interesting, that's how I remembered it too!

However, Wikipedia says: "While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies)

Either were just Edward Burnays archetypes.

I have, and you can make the case that this is what's happening, and use Trumps 2017 tax cut as a very good example of elites complaining about him, but successfully using him for their own ends.

And that would be true, but I don't believe that overall, since it presupposes that just because someone is a celebrity, they are necessarily some sort of mindless, insentient vessel that optimizes for fame and can otherwise be controlled. Why shouldn't Kim Kardashian have strong-but-misguided opinions like any other random person? And wouldn't her existing fame make her way less amenable to influence by unknown individuals? To use a real-life example, much of Trump's immigration obsession is not shared by the elites who benefited from his tax cuts.

Ultimately, I don't believe it because I don't think any person can be as easily influenced as this scenario implies.

Useful idiots work freelance, because any longer and they become a liability. I think there is a vast pool of freelance celebrity today, with a deep bench of influencers attempting to expand it further. So if Kim doesn’t work tomorrow, someone else will. The difficulty with Trump is that his office has a 4 year appointment and he accomplished his goal in 2, leading to 2 more goalless years.

Sounds like the Hitchhikers Guide.