The Morally Superior Celebrity

fool

noun a person who lacks good sense or judgment : a stupid or silly person

stupid

noun not intelligent : having or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things

-Merriam Webster dictionary

One of my pet peeves is celebrities lecturing us common folk upon topics on which they have no real expertise: Gwenyth Paltrow, Bob Barker, The Dixie Chicks; you remember; like Rosie O’Donnell preaching to America about family values or a morbidly obese Michael Moore lecturing the country on the evils of fast food...kind of a foolish thing to be doing. But one of the worst and must vulgar of these haranguers is Ricky Gervais.

Mr. Gervais is a successful British comedian who uses his celebrity status as a platform to demonize hunters, especially women hunters. In a profane-laced Facebook post lambasting of American hunter Rebecca Francis, Gervais accused hunters of “exploiting the poor” as “rich psychopaths,” and equated sustainable use sport hunting akin to paying to murder human cancer patients if the money went to a good cause.

The sad part is, Mr. Gervais has a broad social media following with 10 million followers between his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Think about that: 10 million people actually pay heed to Gervais’ tyrannical rants of half-truths, lies, and innuendo on the subject of hunting, a topic on which he clearly knows nothing about, and all of this bile is directed at you and I. Even more so if you are a female hunter.

Gervais used his power and influence to specifically target American hunter Rebecca Francis, inciting thousands of people to call for death to Francis, death to her family, and death to other women who hunt; the same kind of mob mentality you would find in Iran in 1979...or today.

Kim Kardashian is famous, but that doesn’t make her an expert on foreign affairs or global warming, just as Ricky Gervais has no special knowledge, or apparently, any knowledge at all as to how wildlife conservations actually work in today’s world. Which brings me back to my original premise

Lecturing publically about things of which you do not know fits the definition of fool, but stupid? Gervais is clearly not stupid. He has a fantastic mental capacity to learn, understand, and reason. Trouble is, he will not learn, understand or even attempt to reason about that which he opposes with such righteous indignation. So what does that make him? That's easy: a liberal.