I was just thinking the other day about artists/celebrities who speak out on controversial issues, and the proper way to respond to statements you may disagree on as a private citizen. The two examples that come to mind are the Dixie Chicks speaking out against George Bush at the beginning of the Iraq war (in retrospect, I think one of the bravest stances I've seen, given their audience), or Tom Cruise railing against psychiatry.
How does one express support for, or voice disagreement with a celebrity who makes a stance on an issue outside of their line of work without doing it through sales? Having lived with depression for a number a years, I couldn't have disagreed more with Tom Cruise's stance that it's all false, and that they're trying to control us, etc. Knowing I'll never have the chance to debate him on it, the only recourse I thought I had was to stop seeing his movies (and I have pretty much done that, with two exceptions - M:I3 when my roommate Jon talked me into going, and Tropic Thunder, which I got from the library). The Dixie Chicks perhaps stand as the best example of this in recent memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks#Political_controversy
The problem with this angle is that people aren't necessarily going to buy albums/movies/etc of people whose views they support, so it becomes a one-way street in which it's a bad idea for entertainers to speak publicly on anything controversial (or take a controversial stance on a normal issue) . In essence, it becomes censorship of anything you oppose. I don't want to endorse censorship, even though I think ignorance (or since Cruise claims to have done all the research on psychiatry, just drawing incorrect conclusions) broadcast through celebrities often carries too much weight, and is harmful to many people. I don't want entertainers to be afraid or discouraged from taking potentially unpopular stances, because of the power they have to do good things (see George Clooney, Don Cheadle), so what other options are there?
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Give him a chance to defend himself, write a letter.
ReplyDeleteI happen to think that what he does as a professional is different from his personal opinions in politics or social issues. I find him to be a good actor and have no problem allowing him to hold any private belief. Of course once he uses his celebrity to advertise that belief he has crossed an obvious ethical boundary. Nevertheless, I'd like to see if he has parsed out the statements he made on The Today Show. That is hardly a fair forum. If he truly does take the absolutist stance in matters of psychiatry (or really anything but I can't say absolutism doesn't work absolutely without contradicting myself) then I can show you how he's wrong. The fact that you have worked with them and found success proves he is wrong. But maybe he takes a stance closer to my own thinking - which of course I believe is more in line with the truth - that Americans (why not all humans?) look for the answer in a pill before they look to solve the problem themselves. Nietzsche is shitting in his grave, I'm sure.
I agree that his personal opinions are separate from his work as an actor. And I'm fine with people having whatever views they want to have, but when they propose them in public in a manner that tries to spread them, then I have a problem with it (if it's a harmful view, which I take his to be-if you don't know why, I can elaborate). For instance, I don't really have any problem with John Travolta or Beck (both scientologists). In fact, I'm a huge fan of Beck. But if he holds those views, he never publicizes them in the fashion Tom Cruise did.
ReplyDeleteWhat if a celebrity openly endorses some discriminatory policy, and in addition to their fame also uses their personal wealth to further that 'cause.' Then continuing to purchase their products essentially becomes either an endorsement of the views, or just general apathy, does it not?
I don't anticipate writing a letter will really make any impact when he holds the views that he stated (without knowing me, that medication only masks the problem and that I need to exercise more and have a healthier diet, and that'll solve everything). Were I to write a letter, I think there would be two possible pathways. First, he reads it and responds directly to me, in which case I suspect it would go back to the problem I referred to a while back, in that he's got a lot of cherry-picked evidence, and will ignore any valid points I make. Were it an actual debate, I suspect he would take the aggressive stance and just try to overtake the conversation, as he did with Matt Lauer, with random facts (possibly facts, but who knows) that are hard to dispute unless you're a bonified expert on the field, in which case it would be easy to dispute. I'd say this path is extremely unlikely, given the volume of mail he most likely gets. The second path would be that I receive no response or a form letter back (like the response from the senators on the energy bill). In this case, my letter has accomplished nothing.
Also, I think it's stereotyping to say that Americans (or all humans) look for the answer in a pill before they look to solve the problem. It may be true or it may not be, but it's not something we can really know, is it? Until it is, don't we need to give people the benefit of the doubt? If you're a doctor in the emergency room, do you first assume that anybody coming in complaining of pain is specifically seeking narcotics, or do you first try to figure out what's causing the pain, before seeing evidence that the person is just there for drugs?
Paragraph 1: what Beck? Glenn Beck?
ReplyDeleteParagraph 2: Has Cruise really made a kind of broad endorsement? Is he using his celebrity to change policy? He very well might be, but my only evidence is his Today Show interview and I know enough of about their muckraker journalism to give more leeway to Cruise.
Paragraph 3: Write the letter and see what happens. In addition, try to find more information about Cruise's Crusade against psychiatric drugs (where else has he given talks and when for instance).
Paragraph 4: Yes, the statement was perhaps too broad, I'll revise it now: there seems to be a trend in the last 50 years for Americans to expect certain things from medicine which are not only unrealistic but antithetical to the idea that there is no better steward of your health than the you. I'm not sure if medicine is advertising itself to have the panacea in any and all matters biologic, but it's certainly not true. We'd all be better off seeing doctors as mechanics who fix something AFTER it's grossly damaged.
Paragraph 1: Beck, the musician. No, I don't love Glenn Beck. I actually know very little of Glenn Beck, but what I do know doesn't really inspire me to keep listening to him.
ReplyDeleteParagraphs 2 & 3: I will have to look into his efforts to determine if it's a more widespread approach, or just the interview discussing his criticism of Brooke Shields. But I believe he criticized her without provocation.
As for the claims of muckraker (is this the right term?) journalism, here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc_wjp262RY
I think Lauer in this interview actually handles the topic quite well.
Paragraph 4: I can definitely see the aspect where people expect more out of medicine than may be available, and I think there are perhaps two aspects to this (probably more, but these two come to mind). One is how science presents itself to the general public, and the other is what tries to pass itself off to the public as science for a profit (i.e. magic cures, or some random thing that protects you from swine flu, etc.). Scientific American had a podcast on the former a little while back, and while brief, makes a couple good points:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=future-of-science-coverage-09-07-06
1) If it's not on Rock Band or the 80s station I probably haven't heard of it.
ReplyDelete2) Yeah, I was looking for a disparaging term for journalist and muckraker came to mind. I think these might actually be legitimate journalists. Maybe yellow journalist? I'm not sure.
4) Medicine and the pharmaceuticals seem to have different interests ultimately. I'm not sure. This is a complicated question: How does medicine present itself to society and from where I stand it's going to be very difficult to give an unbiased opinion.
Also, I have to add. Tom Cruise at least for the most part is making a fair bit of sense here. It's Lauer who cuts short the debate, "we can go around for hours." Well yes, you can, because perhaps the issue isn't so simple that it can be explained in 5:48.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, when Cruise accuses Lauer of not understanding the history of the subject which he is reporting Lauer replies, "I'm not prescribing Ritalin Tom." And he summarily attacks Cruise after that. We can learn quite a bit from this exchange in the errors made both by Cruise and Lauer. Cruise is attacked an established norm and Lauer, unwittingly, is defending it - this is what I see when I watch that video. Neither one actually does a good job of convincing anyone of anything (new) but I blame the concision there. It would take several debates spanning several hours with much more learned and capable people than Lauer and Cruise to accomplish this. Cruise also brings up Brave New World; I need to see what Lauer's face looks like when this is said (I'm giving 50:50 odds that Lauer has read this book).
I'll finally say that Cruise asks a question in a way I hadn't thought of, "what is the blood test telling you how much Adderall to prescribe?" As far as I know, there isn't one. Look up the symptoms for ADD and ADHD as a starter and we can start having a separate but equally if not more important discussion.
Only one thing to really add to this discussion. I would have advised Cruise to simply say, "Ritalin is a temporary solution that buys parents and children time (1-2 months) to form an action plan that can be implemented to better suit all the individuals without the use of drugs longterm. As of right now it is being grossly over-prescribed and drug companies make the most profit not from helping patients short-term, but by making life-time “addicts”.”
ReplyDeleteDrugs are like oxygen tanks. They can save your life in the short-term, but eventually you need to find fresh air.
I think Cruise was trying to say this less-eloquently.
I'm not so sure that's what Cruise was saying. He seemed to take a pretty absolutist stance that medications are never an option. If he were fine with short term use as a crutch to help somebody get better, wouldn't post-partum depression be the prime example? Medication in the short term until the mother can stabilize and doesn't end up harming the child or herself?
ReplyDeleteI forgot to respond to Brent's previous post. I did think he made a good point (or a valid question) in regards to the blood tests, but I have two counter points/questions (that I don't know the answer to). First, how often is there a standard equation for dosage based on a test? The test may determine what's wrong and the severity of it, but isn't it still usually up to the doctor's disgression as to the dosage? And second, for mental issues, would a chemical imbalance be localized to the brain? If so, how easy would that be to test? These may be horribly ignorant questions for somebody with my background, but I honestly don't know.
Finally, this discussion has strayed from what I initially was asking, which is what is a proper response to celebrities who use their position for what I consider to be harmful views? Once I have time (likely after the next trip to Minnesota), I'll try to remember to write Cruise a letter and see what happens. But are there any thoughts or ideas beyond that?
Here's a related video (I saw it linked from Robert Wuhl's Assume the Position). It's only five minutes, so it's worth watching, but unfortunately, nobody really brings up any interesting points in it, other than Wuhl pointing out that the press should be educating George Clooney (and everybody else) about Darfur instead of the other way around, which the journalist almost takes offense at.
ReplyDeletehttp://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-
us&vid=50e9e72d-60bd-490b-a878-82bcfbc8090a