The Daily Caller, in its efforts to discredit some of President Obama’s celebrity surrogates, has decided that the most effective way to push back against people like Sarah Jessica Parker is to imply they’re ugly and synonymous with their roles. In an item entitled “Sarah Jessica Parker sticks her nose into 2012 campaign,” Neil Munro apparently thinks it’s clever to play off a fact that some people don’t like Parker’s looks, calling her “the celebrity horse that Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign is betting on.” And he goes on to suggest that Parker is defined by the fact that “she played a single New York columnist who meets and sleeps with various men while living in the city. The role made her famous, and also won her a top place in New York City’s social circuit.” The Daily Caller might take a moment surfing over to IMDb for a reminder that Parker was a well-established actress long before she signed on for Sex and the City. And apparently this comes as news to folks, but Sarah Jessica Parker is not, in fact, the same person as Carrie Bradshaw.

The whole thing is an ugly, substanceless slam disguised as a piece of reporting about the fact that, shockingly, some conservatives don’t like the ad that Parker cut in support of the Obama campaign. Parker, by the text of this reasoning, is apparently incapable of supporting the Obama administration effectively because she is wealthy and is an actress. But the subtext is clear: Sarah Jessica Parker is ugly. And she was in that slutty television show, too. This kind of slagging of a successful woman is the last refuge of people with no legitimate arguments who are terrified they’re losing. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of shining a mirror in someone’s eyes so you can run away while they’re distracted.

I generally find the idea that people who work in Hollywood are flaky or somehow less entitled to their political opinions than the rest of the country bizarre. It’s not as if someone who makes a lot of money as an industrialist or an energy titan is uniquely more connected to middle class Americans than someone who works in Hollywood. If hedge funders get some sort of credit for interacting with white collar workers in their office or working on issues that end up affecting the rest of the American economy, there’s no reason actors and directors shouldn’t get equivalent credit for their contact with their crews or for working on projects that explore fantasies of American life. There are smart and thoughtful people and dumb and shallow people working and succeeding in every industry in America.

And beyond the basic intelligence of people who work in Hollywood, it’s not as if entertainment is a job detached from politics, or as if one’s employment is the sole determinant of what political issues one is invested in. Sarah Jessica Parker has a long record of involvement with UNICEF and has done work on behalf of anti-hunger programs in New York. Latina actresses like Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson have backed the administration as parts of their efforts on voting access and women’s issues. Conservatives love treating Hollywood celebrities like they’re valuable and substantive when they voice conservative opinions, whether it’s Jon Lovitz critizing Obama or the prospect that Obama might lose Hollywood support during the SOPA fight. But when they back liberal politicians or causes they’re inherently dumb, vapid, substanceless. And apparently if they’re women, you can single out their noses as a reason to tell them to stay out of processes they don’t belong in.

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I will be spending my White House Correspondents Association Dinner watching punk rock documentaries and drinking wine. But the whole thing is a hilarious spectacle, particularly the rush by news organizations to secure high-profile guests at their tables. And these are the funniest, most revealing guests each of the outlets have scored this year—that we know of so far.

ABC: Christa Miller and Bill Lawrence of Cougar Town. The network keeps the show in limbo forever, but hey, it’ll throw the folks involved some rubber chicken!

AFP: Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters. Oddly appropriate for a newsgathering organization.

Atlantic Media: Sex and the City‘s Darren Starr. Did Carrie ever score a byline in The Atlantic? Her fights with big would fit her in just fine among some of the magazine’s other female regulars.

Bloomberg: Zooey Deschanel. Clear win for odd couple of the evening

CBS: Homeland star Claire Danes. Blatant, but brilliant, Obama-pandering.

Fox: Lindsay Lohan. Not that Fox engages in tabloid journalism or anything.

Huffington Post: True Blood stars and parents-to-be Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, who will also edit HuffPo’s Vampire Parenting section.

The New Yorker: Portlandia stars and New Yorker profile subjects Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, who presumably will enquire after the welfare of their rubber chicken.

Newsweek/The Daily Beast: Reese Witherspoon, who will totally play Tina Brown in the inevitable biopic.

People: Peeta, we mean, Josh Hutcherson, who will be a mystery to the core WHCA dinner demographic.

POLITICO: MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt who should make for the evening’s most awkward table pairing.

USA Today: Kelli Garner of Pan Am. Well, maybe not anymore. But I guess they could have bet on the Playboy Club?

And though I’m generally loath to yield them pride of place, the Washington Times totally schools the Washington Post. The latter scored Pierce Brosnan. The former, The Artist scene-stealer Uggie.

George Clooney was the actor who irritated me most in 2011: I thought The Descendants was a less-revealing-than-it-thought-it-was celebration of rich people, and the Ides of March fundamentally misunderstood the dynamics of politics, and was weirdly smug about that ignorance. But I think he gets something important right about celebrities who want to speak out about politics in this week’s issue of The Hollywood Reporter:

Through the years, he says he has learned to think carefully before he speaks out on issues, but that makes his commitment to some causes all the more courageous. His criticism of the war in Iraq made him a highly controversial figure in the early 2000s. “They did a half-hour show on Fox saying my career was over, and there was a cover of one of those magazines with the word ‘traitor’ written on it, and the White House was passing out a deck of weasels and I was on one of the cards,” he recalls. After initial anger, there was a brief moment when he felt afraid. “I called my dad and said, ‘Am I in trouble?’ And he said, ‘Grow up. You’ve got money. You’ve got a job. You can’t demand freedom of speech and then say, “But don’t say bad things about me.” ‘ And he was right.”

Even more precisely, I think it’s that you can’t expect both that your endorsement of a cause or position will mean something and then also expect that people will not react to that endorsement as if it carries weight. I don’t think that the only way for artists to be of service to their politics is for them to validate politicians and policies with their constituencies—they have independent ideas to offer about framing and policy. But recognizing, when you have a lot of power, that you speak from a privileged position, is always smart and classy.

I’m not usually one to police the behavior of celebrities, but Mark Wahlberg’s recent statements about September 11 are really egregious and deserve a thorough fisking. He told Men’s Journal: “If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.”

First, who knew Mark Wahlberg knew how to fly commercial aircraft?

Second, for the love of all that is holy, do you know nothing about what went down on September 11? When people get out of their seats and start murdering members of the crew, it wouldn’t have been particularly surprising if people were shocked enough not to react until it was too late. And as it turns out, they weren’t. The passengers on United 93, including a judo expert and a rugby player (who may not be as fit as Mr. Wahlberg, but are not incapable people), fought back against the men who hijacked their flight. As it turns out, people with weapons who are determined to die are decent at thwarting the people fighting back against them who want to live. The hijacker at the controls of the plane dipped and rolled to thwart the passengers’ efforts. And he crashed it before they could get to the cockpit.

This is just profoundly disrespectful to everyone who died on planes on September 11, whether they fought back or not. It shows no understanding of their ordeal, or their courage. And it mistakes action movie theatrics, where the fights are scripted and all the participants share an interest in making a great scene rather than finding themselves at deadly odds, for the struggle to live.