More Celebrity Help

A couple days ago George Clooney was arrested in Washington, DC, at the Embassy of Sudan while protesting the actions of Omar Al-Bashir, the country's president. The Sudanese government is still bombing and attacking innocent civilians, confirming Al-Bashir's status as an alleged war criminal.


Clooney's plan is to use his celebrity status to draw as much attention as possible to this issue. He says, "I don't make policy. I can just make it louder." Upon hearing this, I was reminded again of the Kony 2012 video we talked about in class. Celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey used their star power to draw attention to this video and the issues surrounding Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony.


I found it interesting that in the past week the only things I have read about both these problems involving war criminals, it has been in regard to the celebrities involved with the issues. It seems that celebrities are becoming America's number one source for providing awareness of global conflicts. Awareness of issues is certainly necessary in order to solve them, but what does is say about our society if the path to this awareness is celebrities? 


Does the way in which we become aware of issues affect if how we go about solving them? Would learning about the war in Sudan through George Clooney talking about it on a talk show vs. learning about it from a newspaper article yield a different response from you?