On Friday, Chris Evans, Marvel's Captain America and one of the Internet's collective boyfriends, sent a video to members of Congress. "Hi, I'm Chris Evans," he says. "If you're watching this, I hope you'll consider contributing to my new civics engagement project called A Starting Point. It's a website designed to provide succinct answers to common questions by presenting both the Democratic and Republican point of view on dozens of issues across the political landscape."
In the video, Evans describes the website to senators and representatives he met with on-camera as "a one-stop shop for simple digestible information from people who know best," explaining that he's looking for one minute-long explanations about their stances on issues they want to talk about. He pitches it as a way to "galvanize" their base while also, maybe, who knows, changing someone's mind.
The video went public when CNN got a hold of it, and though Evans' people weren't available for comment, Evans himself confirmed the whole thing was legit on Twitter:
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It's admirable that Evans is using his celebrity to try to make politics more accessible, but the approach is very, well, optimistic to say the least. Giving politicians one more platform where they can stump and spin all they want, even if only for a minute every time, is probably not going to go very far in changing anyone's opinions. And often, presenting an issue as a matter of two sides simply disagreeing can give the illusion that some middle point between them is actually the best approach, which is Howard Schultz's entire argument for why he should be president.
Still, A Starting Point could turn out to be productive and interesting, provided that it's managed right—and assuming there're an extra few minutes per issue dedicated to fact-checking whatever the members of Congress say.