The Golden Globe Awards

This past Sunday the 77^th Golden Globe Awards occurred, in case you missed it. The Golden Globe Awards are one of those annual self-congratulatory Hollywood-manufactured media events used to hype the studio’s shows and give the leading stars some red-carpet media exposure. This year it was hosted for the fifth (and no doubt last) time by actor and stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais, who proceeded to make the attendees uncomfortable by telling it like it really is in his opening monologue (you can watch it here on YouTube, or read the transcript here). It has made something of a fuss.

Here are his closing lines:

  “So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.  

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It's already three hours long. Right, let's do the first award.”

I have always wondered why reporters make such a fuss about what Hollywood stars say about current political events. Certainly they are entitled to their own opinions just like the rest of us. But why should I care what is said by a pampered, overpaid star who owes his/her fortune and fame mostly to an ability on set to say convincingly lines written by someone else? It seems to me of no more importance than opinions collected occasionally by reporters from random “man-on-the-street” interviews with people who may well believe the world was created 6000 years ago, can’t balance their checkbooks, and may not be able to find the Atlantic ocean on a world map (If you think this is a little over the top, go peruse the polls from the Pew Research Center or the studies from the Annenberg Public PolicyCenter. It’s frightening how poorly educated the general public is.)

And along the same lines, I find it almost amusing that many of the same Democratic politicians who applauded President Obama’s decision to take out Osama bin Laden (violating Pakistan’s sovereignty in the process, by the way) are outraged that President Trump would violate Iraq’s sovereignty to kill Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who arguably has had more people killed (including Americans) than bin Laden ever managed. Or are they really simply put out that the military and Trump, recognizing that Congress leaks like sieve, didn’t give them advance notice?

There are real legal, moral and practical issues with killing people remotely with drones, especially in other countries with whom we are not formally at war, and the nation needs to have a rational debate about this practice. Although the legal issue is probably moot. Legal rules are simply rules that people make up and agree to abide by, and many nations have already decided not to follow the rules (eg. Russia poisoning people in the UK, Iran plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador in the U.S., ISIS killing civilians right and left, Hezbollah terrorists using suicide bombers to kill civilians, or the Mossdad taking out terrorists around the world, etc).

The moral issue is more difficult. If one has an opponent who has killed civilians in the past and is no doubt working to kill more in the future, and that opponent is somewhere where she/he can’t be captured and tried in the normal judicial process, and one has the means to eliminate them before they cause more deaths, is it moral to refuse to do so? And especially if there are no consequences to oneself for “morally” deciding not to (ie – other people’s families die because of this decision, but not yours). This is a difficult issue, and simplistic moral on-liners by people who have no real skin in the game are of no help in resolving it.