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Sharon Stone's Karmic Assessment Of China

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. Bertrand Russell I was going to write a brilliant post on Sharon Stone's attributing the Sichuan earthquake to "possible" karma, but since David Wolf over at Silicon Hutong beat me to it in his post entitled, "A Perspective on 'Karma,'" I hereby fully incorporate by reference all that David said, as though fully set forth herein. Having done that, however, I cannot resist pilfering word for word, the best part of David's post, dealing with how best to handle Ms. Stone's comments:

There are, therefore, two correct responses to this situation: 1. Pointedly ignore Ms. Stone and others like her; or 2. Set out to clarify the record. I would never defend Ms. Stone and what she said. Personally, I find every word of her diatribe, the setting, and the political convictions that underlie it, utterly detestable. But by attacking her personally we miss an opportunity to debate the point. And the debate is what is important. Not the source of the opinion that begets it.

At the same time, go ahead and label me naive, but I find it hard to believe that blind hatred of the Chinese people has reached such a fever pitch in Hollywood that Ms. Stone should have felt emboldened to attribute widespread death, injury and homelessness (including, no doubt, to Tibetans) as some sort of comeuppance? I prefer to think Ms. Stone's views on this are in the extreme minority, even in Hollywood.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).