Celebrities say no to terrorism
I'm with slacktivist on this one. Taking out a big ad in the LA Times to condemn something that everyone already thinks is evil is not "taking a stand", it's just self-aggrandizement. It's like when people come out in support of Christianity, the religion of some 90% of the country. Oh, your bravery astounds me! Would that I had such cajones! To publicly declare something that nearly everyone agrees with must require a strength of spirit far beyond anything I can ever hope to obtain.
This reminds me of the celebrity activism parodies in the movie Team America: World Police. I usually don't find celebrity activism annoying the way some people do. I'm glad that people use their fame to try to improve the world. But I guess in this case I can feel a little annoyed, too.
UPDATE: OK, I guess this could be a pro-Israeli statement that doesn't quite come out and say exactly that (a commenter on slacktivist makes this argument). If you want to argue that the media has been unfair to Israel in its reporting, or that people or nations aren't treating Israel fairly, please come out and say so. Then we can discuss whether it is true or not. But saying "terrorism is bad" is very different than saying "Israel has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and yet gets no credit for it."
So what do I think about what this statement might be saying, but doesn't come out and say directly? While I sympathize with Israel's predicament (how do you fight people embedded in a civilian population, that delights in inflicting civilian casualties?), I think they killed a lot of people unncessarily. Given how quickly they are withdrawing from Lebanon, did all that infrastructure destruction really give them anything? I'll say that Israel's hats are a lighter shade of grey than Hezbollah's black hats, but I'm not going to grant them "good guy" status in my moral cosmology.
This reminds me of the celebrity activism parodies in the movie Team America: World Police. I usually don't find celebrity activism annoying the way some people do. I'm glad that people use their fame to try to improve the world. But I guess in this case I can feel a little annoyed, too.
UPDATE: OK, I guess this could be a pro-Israeli statement that doesn't quite come out and say exactly that (a commenter on slacktivist makes this argument). If you want to argue that the media has been unfair to Israel in its reporting, or that people or nations aren't treating Israel fairly, please come out and say so. Then we can discuss whether it is true or not. But saying "terrorism is bad" is very different than saying "Israel has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and yet gets no credit for it."
So what do I think about what this statement might be saying, but doesn't come out and say directly? While I sympathize with Israel's predicament (how do you fight people embedded in a civilian population, that delights in inflicting civilian casualties?), I think they killed a lot of people unncessarily. Given how quickly they are withdrawing from Lebanon, did all that infrastructure destruction really give them anything? I'll say that Israel's hats are a lighter shade of grey than Hezbollah's black hats, but I'm not going to grant them "good guy" status in my moral cosmology.
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