By Bill Vaughn
Contributing Columnist
Columbus Post

In the waning days of the South Carolina primaries, POLI-SIGH! got face time with some of Hollywood's biggest young stars on the campaign trail. Acclaimed actress Kerry Washington spoke at Benedict College of how politics impact loans, the roads, and the rising price of healthcare and transportation. "Politics is the education that got you here and the education you will have after you leave here," she said. "And today, sadly, politics is life or death. [It's] about whether we're fighting a war or not. How did we end up fighting a war? One that Barack Obama has spoken against from the beginning. That is politics. So it's not just talk and polite conversation. I think that our job as young people and your job as young people is to make politics sexy."
Washington, who appears in the new will.i.am campaign video, distressed over how so many of us know more about the Super Bowl than we do the primaries: "It's not OK that we TiVo America's Next Top Model, but we don't watch the debates. We have to realize that this is our country. If you want to have representation in our government then this is how we do it. It comes to your vote."
Chris Tucker, filling in for Usher, was met with great enthusiasm. The animated comic actor told of how he met Obama some time ago and saw the kind of man he is. "I love Clinton," he shouted. "But I'm for change. For me, that's what we need in the country to come back together as a people. I think he's an average man like me and he'll take care of average problems." Tucker next stars as valet George Jacobs in the film version of his autobiography, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra.
Backstage, the duo had an exclusive chat with POLI-SIGH! on the power of their celebrity. "I'm an American citizen who actually exercises my right for free speech," said Washington, a 2005 Image Award winner for Ray. "I always have in college and now it's time to be on the Obama mission where people will show up to hear what I have to say."
Tucker claims he's not trying to sway anybody to vote for any individual candidate. "What I am tying to do is to convince these kids to go out and vote," he explained. "Then I'll coach them as to how I made my decision and get them to make their own decision, because that's what being responsible is about." But he did yell "Vote for Obama" in the historic Antisdel Chapel whipping up a frenzy.

Kerry Washington

Washington, who envisions being appointed to Jane Alexander's seat running the NEA, loved what Howard Dean said before the primaries began about the Democratic candidates. "They really reflect part of the spectrum of who we are as Americans," she said. "We are starting to represent who we are as a nation. If you look at the Republican candidates they reflect what our nation looked like a hundred years ago. I think that's really important. We're not avoiding issues anymore. It used to be we'd have a debate and no one would talk about women and no one would talk about people of color, because you didn't have to. This being said, I felt torn. It's not about surface identity. I let go of identity and looked at issues, values and principals. That's how I got to Barack Obama. I'm not abandoning women. I'm a feminist and I'll always be a feminst."
"And that's what Martin Luther King, Jr. died for," added Tucker. "This very day where you see the diversity. How ironic this is going on. He dreamed it. It wasn't in existence when he was here. It manifested itself in our generation. A lot of people don't believe for some reason but it's here. We're here!"

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