If Jessica Alba is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. Fortunately, she’s right.

Your humble blogger has long been interested in the intersection between celebrity and politics. I therefore feel compelled to report the following anecdote concerning Jessica Alba and Bill O’Reilly: Jessica Alba is setting the record straight: Sweden was neutral during World War II. Alba and Fox TV show host Bill O’Reilly traded punches last week after ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Your humble blogger has long been interested in the intersection between celebrity and politics.

Your humble blogger has long been interested in the intersection between celebrity and politics.

I therefore feel compelled to report the following anecdote concerning Jessica Alba and Bill O’Reilly:

Jessica Alba is setting the record straight: Sweden was neutral during World War II.

Alba and Fox TV show host Bill O’Reilly traded punches last week after the presidential inauguration. After Alba told a Fox reporter that O’Reilly was “kind of an a-hole;” he retaliated by calling her a “pinhead” for telling a reporter to “be Sweden about it,” assuming she meant Switzerland.

“I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately,” Alba blogged on MySpace Celebrity. “Last week, Mr. Bill O’Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people… it’s so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland.”

For the record, Alba wins this fact fight. This is the second time in the past year that a right-wing political figure has been brought low by a celebrity.

This is surprising. It’s pretty easy to poke fun at celebs like Paris Hilton or Jessica Alba (the latter’s inauguration video is unintentionally very funny). Right-wing politicos and pundits should be used to debate.

So why are celebrities schooling them? Has the quality of conservative leadership really fallen so far? What happens when the true A-listers, like, say, Salma Hayek, start focusing their fire on Mitch McConnell or Rush Limbaugh?

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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