Sharon Stone-cold

Dear oh dear, poor Sharon Stone must be kicking herself. Correction, Sharon Stone's publicist must be kicking her, as this week she spectacularly put her foot in it by alienating the third largest country in the world. Dear oh dear indeed.

At the Cannes Film Festival, the usual press surrounded the stars to get a few quotes to fill their column inches. Imagine the scene as the journalists asked Stone the standard questions... "How did you like working with (insert name of director/actor)?", "Tell us about your new film...", etc etc. Then one cocky journalist decides to try his/her luck and ask her to comment on the (very touchy) topic of the situation between China and Tibet. There are a few sniggers from the other journos in the crowd; of course she's not going to comment on that! Celebrities can rarely get away with having a public opinion when it comes to politics. Unless it's written into a song, ala Bono, Lennon, Dylan. A catchy melody tends to filter a bit of tension between insults, we've discovered.
Unfortunately, Stone didn't have a catchy melody, or a thought for her flailing career when she let rip, "I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans". Well, not many people are, Shaz. Surely, she must have some great intellectual follow up to such an over-opinionated remark.. "(...) because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else." Oh I see. Well that's a good enough reason then... Isn't it?

She could have left it at that, and perhaps got away with losing a few Chinese fans, but she went on to add that she reckons that because China were mean to Tibet, the Sichuan earthquake happened. Ouch. So Stoney turns out to be a big believer in karma - the Hindu and Buddhist belief of cause and effect. It's no big deal. If we can accept that Tom Cruise believes we're all aliens, and Michael Jackson believes he's Peter Pan, we can come to terms with Sharon Stone believing in karma. In fact, I'm actually a believer in karma myself, but only really to the point of if I'm rude to my mum then I'll break a fingernail. If I did have strong opinions about more pressing matters, such as the reason why my mate's husband left her must be because she dropped his toothbrush down the toilet and didn't tell him, I'd have the sense not to blab about it. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that people don't like blabbers. Blabbing is bad.

I think that Sharon Stone blabbed a bit too much that day. And her karmic retribution is that she'll be lucky if any film featuring her will be shown in China and Hong Kong for a while, and her advertising campaigns for names such as Christian Dior have all been removed from stores and billboards. There is now a call for a boycott of other products with which Stone is said to be associated, such as Guerlain and Ebel. Phew-wee, now that's some bad karma. She must've dropped a whole lot of toothbrushes down the toilet, as well as insulted *1321851888 people.

For future reference, we can make the assumption that blabbing equals bad karma, kids.

*Population of China 2007, courtesy of wiki.answers.com
Quotes courtesy of Beijing Today 30/05/08 p.5