‘Biden should own his old age’ and other bad Jeffrey Katzenberg ideas

Seventy-two-year-old entertainment mogul and campaign advisor Jeffrey Katzenberg has some sage advice for President Biden: eighty is the new sixty. 

In the Wall Street Journal, Katzenberg encouraged Biden to “own” his age and tout his longevity and wisdom as assets. Katzenberg pointed to Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger, similarly geriatric celebrities who still make splashes in their industries, as style models for Biden.

Cockburn can’t help but think Katzenberg is onto something here. Imagine: Joe Biden and the Trials of Burisma — that’s sure to help with the youth vote. And as long as there aren’t any sandbags present, Biden could do well to launch a stadium tour when he hits the campaign trail. Nothing would bring the American voters more confidence than seeing Biden hitting Mick Jagger’s whirling-dervish dance moves.  

Longtime Democratic donor George Clooney suspects Katzenberg is going to incorporate narrative elements to the Biden campaign. “Everybody keeps coming into Hollywood for cash, and they don’t come to us for the one thing we do better than anybody, which is tell stories,” Clooney told the WSJ. “And so I think it’s probably a very good idea that they’re going to Jeffrey not just for raising money, but for narratives. And I think that’s a very good thing. Jeffrey, he’s a dog with a bone and he doesn’t let go.”

Katzenberg was announced as one of the seven co-chairs for Biden’s reelection campaign earlier this year. The former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of DreamWorks animation is expected to bring Hollywood connections to the president’s circle of supporters. Cockburn hopes he can bring free Shrek and Madagascar-themed merchandise to the next campaign event. 

Katzenberg is more recently known as the founder of Quibi, a defunct short-form video platform that launched in 2018. When the company went under, Katzenberg suggested that employees listen to the song “Get Back Up Again” from the animated children’s film Trolls to buoy their spirits as they were put out of work. Will Biden 2024 require a similar pick-me-up?