Without condoning any of the slander she’s receiving, I think we can all agree that Billie Eilish’s recent comment at the Grammy’s was indefensible. If you can put the general nastiness aside, social media is awash with everything from ruthless satire to well-reasoned arguments demonstrating the intellectual poverty of Eilish’s remarks. Many of those, including the comedian himself, have reprised Ricky Gervais’ shot across the bow from the Golden Globes: “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the world.” While it would be incredibly harsh to claim that Billie Eilish knows nothing about the world, we certainly couldn’t call her speech even remotely thoughtful. But here’s the thing: that’s not a problem for people who agree with the sentiments conveyed by Eilish.

As I noted just over a year ago, after J. K. Rowling again stoked the flames online, “we value the position of celebrities, until they disagree with us.” The obverse of this is that we celebrate the opinions of famous people as long as they’re in our corner. The Billie Eilish debacle demonstrates this very well. Standing on what was not so long ago one of the most coveted stages in the world, it’s easy to confuse Eilish’s impoverished rhetoric for a significant moment, a turning of the political tide. Millions watched on. And as the camera panned the audience we saw countless icons giving her a standing ovation. “These are important, these awards,” Jim Carrey wryly remarked a decade ago. “From our perspective,” he went on, “this is huge.” Only in a cold light of day, everyone would admit it’s anything but that.

So why the hubbub? Why do those who disagree with Eilish’s views relish tearing her apart? On the other hand, why do those whose views resonate with hers feel like this is some kind of victory? When awards season is finished Billie Eilish will go back to making horrible music and this’ll all be forgotten. It will promptly vanish in our culture’s rearview mirror—or it’ll be overshadowed by some other monumental moment created by another celebrity. Of course, when I write “monumental” I’m being sarcastic. Furthermore, celebrities don’t really create these moments; we do. Our weird obsession with what famous people do and say has profoundly impeded intellectual debate and dialogue. So instead of discussing the issues at hand we watch our fifth funny video about one of Eilish’s million Dollar private properties on what she deems “stolen land.” But still, why do we bother?

An answer to the above questions was penned by Plato, over two millennia ago in his Defence of Socrates. “Because of their excellence at their own trade, each claimed to be a great expert also on matters of the utmost importance; and this arrogance of theirs seemed to eclipse wisdom.” While I’d be slow to speak about Eilish being excellent at her trade, she certainly spoke like an expert about matters she clearly knows very little about. I’d also be slow to label this arrogance, as Plato does. Though there is undoubtedly a presumptuousness about using an acceptance speech at music—or film—awards to offer political commentary.

More recently, in his Pensées Blaise Pascal developed Plato’s notion, suggesting that the ill-informed and self-assured opinions of those who’ve excelled in another area can be likened to tyranny. Reflecting on that a few years back I wrote, “The common folly, which Pascal bemoans, is the erroneous conflation of remarkable success or ability in one area with the right to rule all others.” And celebrities are definitely guilty in this regard. They routinely seem to conflate their fame and popularity with profundity. As if fame magically made them well-informed about the complexities of political philosophy.

Only we shouldn’t believe that we’re off the hook here, with this tyranny being entirely the fault of famous people. Because we listen. We don’t only listen to their abjectly horrid music but—inexplicably—we also listen to their opinions. In fact, we clutch tightly celebrities that endorse our own views. Our world is in the throes of a kind of celebrity confirmation bias. Only, as Peter Leithart writes in Solomon Among the Postmoderns, paraphrasing Daniel Boorstin, “A celebrity is someone well known for being well known.” Not for their intellectual prowess or political insights. They are performers, inhabiting a closed-off world of pageantry. We only have ourselves to blame if we ignore that and make out as if their opinions matter.