The “Insert Exotic Cause du Jour” Movement
A great expose on the way thatself-righteous activists blunder around the globe taking on causes to get one over on youand causing only damage to the people they profess to care about. The technique of selecting foreign causes works especially well for those activists and celebrities desperate to be perceived as being more erudite and worldly than the average prole. Since the bulk of Americans know little to nothing about Tibet, Richard Gere has an incredibly low bar to attain to pretend to be very learned on the subject. So for the cost of a plane ticket and a photo-op, he can remain mostly ignorant, learn next to nothing, and still get the benefits of appearing to be a wise protector of something that most proletariat see as exotic and ?beyond them?. This is the dynamic of the pasty Canadian students inexplicably protesting against ?opression? of falun dafa in Tiananmen Square, or Sean Penn buying a plane ticket to Bagdhad, or the Iowa coed who gets involvedin the ?Free Mumia? movement. Without saying wether or not any of these causes have any merit, I think it is safe to say that many of the people who adopt these causes are completely unaware of their own painful ignorance about the subject at hand and in fact are quite proud of their mastery of the subject in comparison to the typical ignorant prole.