Celebrities- Is There Anything That They Don't Know?

I don't write about celebrities often and off all the celebs out there I really feel reluctant to criticise Ashton Kutcher. He seems like a really nice bloke who always takes him Mum with him wherever he goes.

However he is peddling a US variant of the myth of widespread people trafficking that has previously been debunked over here. When challenged on the facts by the liberal magazine The Village Voice- he was claiming that up to 300000* children every year were being sold into child sex slavery- he naturally realised the error of his ways, apologised and promised to research any claims that he made in future.

Not really. He launched a hate campaign against the Voice using his herd of Twitter cretins to scare off advertisers. Oh and insinuate that the publication somehow benefits from child sex with lovely Tweets like:

fact: news outlets who have financial interest in trafficking may have interest in applying bias to facts to secure their revenue 

And:

Hey +AmericanAir. Are you aware that you are advertising on a site that supports the Sale of Human Beings (slavery)?'

Those accusations are obviously both exceptionally nasty lies. Trying to financially ruin people who have told the truth about your lying is known as "doing a Hari".

Some would say that his indifference to the the facts imply that he and fellow celebrities campaigning against child sex trafficking are doing it more for their own egos than because they have any interest in the issue. I disagree and believe that these ads are highly effective, I've certainly cut down on my use of child prostitutes since I learned that Justin Timberlake was campaigning against it and so have all my friends.

The depressing thing is that it looks like there is a real chance that people will be punished for telling the truth and shameless liars will be portrayed as being interested in child welfare.

{ Via both Rodney Balko and John B in the comments here }

* That's 300000 each year, not in total. There are about 75 million under 18s in the USA so lets say there are around 4 million in each year group. Kutcher honestly thinks it's credible that around 7% of children will be sold into sex slavery at some point.