One of the most disgusting people, at least to me, is the children's entertainer Rachel Accurso, or as she's more popularly known, Ms. Rachel.
If you have children or grandchildren, you've likely heard of her. You may have even heard her childlike voice coming through your television as your baby or toddler pays rapt attention to her singing, dancing, and teaching.
When she first began and was gaining her initial popularity, Accurso could do no wrong. Everyone loved her, in no small part, because their kids loved her. She was one of the first to create a YouTube channel specifically to cater to the toddler mind without using quick cuts and blinding colors to keep your child's attention. She used her skills to teach children as young as babies basic skills, including communication and letters.
But then it became clear pretty fast that Accurso was an ideologue. It was a fact that came on so fast that many households didn't pick up on how far into the leftist hellscape she actually was for years, and so many still haven't.
As I've covered on RedState myself, Accurso's connections with leftist causes became hard to ignore, and this includes LGBT — especially transgender — causes, and then, of course, there was the antisemitism that Accurso vehemently denied having, yet she continued to find herself in the company of antisemitic people, as well as an incident involving a liked post on Instagram that practically screamed it. While she doesn't acknowledge it, she makes a very big deal out of siding with Palestinians over Israelis, and refers to the war between Hamas and Israel as a "genocide."
As I wrote back in April, Ms. Rachel is ultimately not a children's entertainer, but an activist who uses her position as one to sell leftist ideals:
What I feel like is obvious but isn't to so many is that Accurso's pipeline doesn't end with her teaching children how to sing, clap, and identify numbers and letters. The end of it is this political activism you see above. Everything she does, from her YouTube to her Netflix and toy deals, all lead parents to her social media presence where she douses them in propaganda.
Her presence on the main stage is a perfect storm of accessing minds through the hearts of people's children. Many see her as "safe" and "educational," but when you start breaking down who she works with and what she does outside her videos, you realize that she's more activist than entertainer.
And this has never been more true. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Accurso drew a line in the sand about who she will and will not work with:
One of her more hardline public stances is her refusal to work with people who have not publicly spoken out in defence of civilians in Gaza. “I’m going to work with people who aren’t in a privileged position, because that’s not fair to them if they could lose the ability to put food on the table. But people who are privileged who don’t say anything? Yeah, I’m not interested in working with them. Because I feel like maybe if we all said something, the genocide would stop,” she explains.
This is going to fool a lot of people into thinking Accurso is just trying to take a moral position, but this is actually something a bit more controlling. This is more of a loyalty oath, and Ms. Rachel is actually one of the few who can do this.
Her position as a beloved children's entertainer has given her a certain amount of moral currency. Some people love Ms. Rachel despite her politics, again, because her children like her, and so when Accurso says things like this, pushing back against her comes with public risk.
You've seen this "loyalty oath" before; it just never looks like it.
You saw a bunch of corporations and celebrities proclaim "Black Lives Matter" on demand.
You saw many bend the knee to the transgender movement with pronouns in their bio. Former "The Madolorian" cast member Gina Carano's entire cancellation started with her refusal to do so.
Saying you took your vaccine and finger-wagging at those who didn't. Ukraine flags, and now "Free Palestine" on social media accounts.
Ms. Rachel is just drawing up another way to force others to bend the knee if they want to be considered the good guys. Her moral currency can be cashed in to make this happen.
The issue is that this is an issue that's already gotten way too far into the minds of many, and many have already picked their sides. The "Palestine" issue is incredibly divisive on the best of days, and I'm not entirely sure Accurso is going to like how split her audience becomes as a result of this hardline stance.
Will it be enough to crash and burn her? Not at first. Not all at once. But the order of things is for all cause célèbre to die, and the people who pushed it to the point of alienation always suffer as a result. She's no different, and I think it'll probably hit her harder given the fact that so many people had allowed her so close to their children because they thought they could trust her.
