Lainey emailed me last night and the subject was I’m a corny asshole and it was to share a video of various Avengers uniting to support Harris-Walz in the last days of the US election, and before election day next Tuesday. 

 

Even five years after Avengers: Endgame, the OG Avengers still have the power to inspire nostalgia. Which is why they’re all FOR SURE showing up in Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027, even if it costs Disney-Marvel a literal billion dollars to make it happen. No matter what anyone says, how coy they play it, the OGs will be there. Out of all the Marvel actors, they have the most pull on the public’s emotions—see also: Lainey’s subject line. It’s been half a decade since they’ve been together on screen and she still loves them, still feels a thrill to see them together, and she’s not the only one.

 

Speaking of OGs, though, where are Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner? Well, Hemsworth isn’t an American citizen, and even though American elections can be felt worldwide, he undoubtedly knows this isn’t the context in which anyone wants to hear from him. For the record, though, because they have accents and people will ask, Danai Gurira is an American citizen (she was born in Iowa to immigrant parents from what is now Zimbabwe), and Paul Bettany became a citizen in time to vote in the 2020 election. As for Renner, he’s not apolitical, but he’s also not as outspoken as, say, Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson, both of whom have campaigned for Democratic candidates before, never mind Chris Evans, whose uncle was a Democratic elected official. I’m not shocked he wasn’t on the Avenger call for Harris-Walz.

 

This is a very cute video, but I do wish they’d actually discussed voting plans and resources for getting to the polls. I’m VERY lucky that my polling place, which also has a drop box for early voting, is literally one block away. I walked my ballot over already. But a lot of people don’t have cars or access to reliable public transportation, they can’t take time off work, or they have some other situation that makes voting challenging. People need plans! And they need to know what resources are available to assist them in voting. 

 

Some areas make it very difficult for people to vote, it’s important to know what’s available to help organize getting people to the polls. So it does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity, that they didn’t actually share any of those resources. People wonder what the value of celebrity endorsements is, and beyond headlines, I don’t think there is much value. I don’t know anyone whose vote depends on what a celebrity thinks. But where celebrities CAN help is sharing information and resources people might otherwise miss, so this would have been a great opportunity to share some info on voting access.

If you’re a US citizen looking for information on voting resources, you can make your voting plan here.

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