I feel like you have it backwards. You're saying that democratic involvement would make these issues cause celebres. But celebrities in many cases already have the power to make a cause a cause celebre. That's part of what being a celebrity and using your name & fame is. We already live in the world you describe.

I'm proposing here a thought experiment where, rather than letting the public arena and media suss out how to play the story, the public gets a direct vote.

My actual hope was the opposite of what you say: rather than leaving the media cycle around celebrities rumble on indefinitely, there'd be some discrete feedback events, checkin points where we can decide whether this de-facto cause celebre is - to borrow from a magazine - wired tired or expired.