Stephen Pollard is all worked up about Paul McCartney:
On today’s BBC Six O’Clock News, the former Beatle and his wife, Lady Heather, are shown watching gruesome footage from China of cats and dogs being killed and then stripped for their fur. The practice is indeed sickening and no decent person could be other than horrified.
Where Sir Paul’s moral indignation becomes simply warped, however, is in his next sentence. “I wouldn’t even dream of going over there to play, in the same way I wouldn’t go to a country that supported apartheid . . . It’s against every rule of humanity.” Sir Paul and his wife then call for a worldwide boycott of all Chinese goods. “If we can hit them in their pockets, maybe they’ll do something to stop this.” […]
Sir Paul has worldwide fame. He could do untold good campaigning for his fellow human beings. Instead, he chooses to try to save a few animals. Go figure.
On the contrary, what perplexes me is the way people get so outraged about those who campaign against animal cruelty – and we’re not talking about animal lib nutters here, just cases like this where we can all agree that unnecessary cruelty is involved. What’s the problem? It’s not a zero-sum game, where any outrage against animal cruelty automatically detracts from campaigns against people cruelty. I’ve no doubt that were Sir Paul to see gruesome pictures of people being killed and then having their skin peeled off while some were still alive, to sell as leather coverings for handbags, he’d be as horrified as the rest of us. The difference would be that thousands of others would be horrified too, to the extent that it would hit the headlines across the world, and there’d be no need for Sir Paul to speak out.
Do we really want another celebrity giving us all the benefit of their opinion on every political topic? Stephen forgets that Sir Paul may not share his views: to judge from the political pronouncements of other rock stars, he almost certainly wouldn’t. Just be glad that he isn’t campaigning for troops out of Iraq now, or a boycott of Israel.
Leave a Reply