Celebrity activism

Nathalie Rothschild on Celebrity activism, which she has trouble to view as selfless:

Farrow and her fasting buddies are presenting their efforts as selfless sacrifices, all done for the sake of suffering Darfurians, to ‘raise awareness’ of their plight and put pressure on the ‘international community’ to intervene. But rather than shedding light on the conflict in Darfur, aloof celebrity activists are primarily drawing attention to themselves while at the same time obscuring the facts on the ground, which are, in reality, complex.
However, for Farrow and other celebrity activists, like Matt Damon and George Clooney, the conflict in Sudan is a black-and-white issue. They present themselves as the virtuous good guys in a morality play where the Khartoum regime are the evil barbarians, the people of Darfur the pathetic victims and Western celebrities are the heroes coming to their rescue. Clooney, for instance, once said of the conflict in Darfur: ‘It’s not a political issue. There’s only right and wrong.’
(...)From celebs demanding, in neo-colonialist fashion, that the West intervene to save Africans from themselves, to greens claiming to represent ‘The Planet’ against mankind, many protests today are staged ‘on behalf of others’ – even if those others have not asked for it. Farrow’s diet for Darfur is part of this contemporary trend. These days, it seems that protests that lack celebrity endorsements and which are staged by those who are actually affected by the conflict they are trying to end, get little attention or airtime.

I'm agnostic on the subject of celebrity activism because celebrities have the right as any citizen to get engage in causes. Nevertheless what I deplore on these celebrity campaign is that they end up being about celebrity and good and evil which is not solely the fault of celebrities, but also of the media, which loves nothing much that syrupy tabloid like of serious topic without feeling questioning their own ethics while being ensured to get a wider audience. Thus the trouble isn't that celebrities don't get celebrity and are unable to be selfless even for good causes, the trouble is that the globalized media likes so much beautiful and effective storytelling that it has let celebrities become the better advocates for causes, which have more knowledgeable, but less flashy advocates.