Obama’s last celebrity push

Stevie Wonder plays a surprise concert while Neil Diamond phones voters on behalf of the president VIDEO

Topics: john mellencamp, dave matthews, neil diamond, celebrities, obama campaign, 2012 election, Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, Jay-Z, Barack Obama, pitbull, ,

Obama's last celebrity push

With the 2012 election now down to its last day, President Obama has been pulling in major star power to urge Americans to get out and vote. According to the AP, 181 celebrities, including prominent actors, musicians, authors, athletes and politicians, “are being deployed to carry his message to television and radio in the waning days of the campaign.” Just this weekend alone …

Stevie Wonder played a surprise concert in Ohio:

Neil Diamond worked the phones in Los Angeles:

(Of course, he sang too):

Will Ferrell, the founder of Facebook, said “he’ll personally give you a tattoo” if you vote for Obama:

Katy Perry performed in Milwaukee:

Pitbull gave a speech at a rally in Florida:

John Mellencamp performed in Dubuque, Iowa:

Dave Matthews played for Obama supporters in Bristow, Va.:

Today, Bruce Springsteen played at an Obama rally in Madison, Wis., saying, “It’s crunch time now, the president’s job, our job, yours and mine – whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, rich, poor, black, brown, white, gay, straight, soldier, civilian – is to keep that hope alive.”

And Jay-Z raps at Obama’s rally in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday afternoon:

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Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com.

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What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

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  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

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