The Chinese government has branded actress Sharon Stone "the enemy of all mankind" after she wondered out loud whether the Sichuan province earthquake was "karma" for Chinese crackdowns in Tibet.
What she actually said (although you wouldn't know it from the media reaction) was not "This is karma for China's actions in Tibet", but "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"
These weren't preconceived remarks that Sharon Stone took into a TV studio to make as her considered reaction to the Chinese earthquake, but idle musings in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, which the media immediately pounced upon and elevated into a major political or even religious statement.
Ok, she sounds a bit dumb, but I expect she'd had a hard day....
The inevitable youtube video of Stone's remarks caused a hullabaloo beyond the bamboo curtain, and Christiana Dior hastily dropped Stone from their Chinese ads for their foul-smelling perfume, which I sincerely hope none of the Clown's readers wear.
The real story is Christian Dior's grovelling statement (having already forced Stone herself to issue a gushing apology):
| Quote: |
| We will never support any opinion that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people. |
The Chinese market is so important now that piffling considerations like free speech can evidently be just swept aside.
Well, phooey to that.
The 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre is coming up! On June 4th, 1989, 2,000-3,000 students were massacred in cold blood by the so-called People's Liberation Army. China is the world's fastest expanding sweat shop, and without having rid themselves of their brutal Communist elite, the Chinese are happily embracing the most unpleasant features of unrestrained market capitalism. And as Sharon Stone was suggesting, they are committing cultural genocide in Tibet. But oh no, we aren't supposed to hurt their feelings!
Thank goodness for the worldwide protesters who have been disrupting the progress of the Olympic torch. There's another flame that needs to blaze more brightly in China before we start worrying about upsetting Chinese feelings.
Hey, China, you don't have to look as far as the West to see what a free media looks like:
Anti-Beijing protests in Seol, South Korea.
And 19 years on, this is still the most courageous act I've ever seen in my life:
One loan protester halts PLA tanks in their tracks.
3 comments:
Where was that protester on loan from, Mr Clown? :wink:
I always find it so fascinating when people criticize China as not being "free", when, of course, you're five times more likely to be in a prison if you're American than if you're Chinese. The US now has more prison slave labor than China, and of course, has murdered many, many more innocent people over the past decade than China has. But I guess the truth is hard to face.
去你大爷的，你懂个鸡巴。。。
Post a Comment