OK, today I stumbled across the fact that a couple of the stars of the now completed SciFi series Battlestar Galactica appeared at the UN for a panel discussion back in March of last year. The New York Times gave it some print, stating:
The Sci Fi Channel series “Battlestar Galactica” will be the subject of a panel discussion involving the creators of the show, two of its stars, Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos, and representatives from the United Nations’ offices of the secretary general and high commissioner for human rights.
How a television series about interstellar travel, ancient prophecies and genocidal robots came to join forces with a terrestrial intergovernmental body relates to the Sci Fi Channel’s philanthropic activities and the United Nations’ efforts to become more media savvy.
Oooookay.
For the United Nations, the event represents the second effort of its Creative Community Outreach Initiative. Announced by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at last June’s Jackson Hole Film Festival, the initiative is the organization’s attempt to “establish partnerships with the entertainment industry to tell the U.N.’s story,” said Juan Carlos Brandt, a spokesman.
Its first undertaking was to allow a television crew to shoot at United Nations facilities this month for an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” about child soldiers.
Will they do another episode, this one about child-rapists and child prostitution? That’s part of “the UN’s story” too.
Representatives from the Sci Fi Channel approached the United Nations early this year. “They came to us and explained that there were themes common to both the show and the U.N.,” Mr. Brandt said, “and that those themes could be discussed here in a serious manner.”
Whoopi Goldberg will moderate the discussions.
Whoopi.
The exemplar of calm, deliberate, factual debate!
Then the following June a couple of UN representatives traveled to Hollyweird and another panel discussion took place there!
The panel featured Battlestar’s executive producers Ron Moore and David Eick; actors Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell; and U.N. representatives Steven Siqueira and Craig Mokhiber (whose actual job titles are so formidable and impressive, they would require a separate essay). Serving as moderator was L.A. Times’ Geoff Boucher. A packed house sat in anticipation of some solid political discourse, which Boucher was quick to point could not have found a more likely home that the intersection of Hollywood and Highland (what with the guy paid to wear that SpongeBob costume being just yards away…….).
SpongeBob for UN Secretary General! The denizens of the ocean are insufficiently represented in the UN!
The U.N.’s Mokhiber seemed sincere in his admission that the U.N. has come to view Battlestar Galactica as “more allegory than fiction.” He cited “freedom from fear and freedom from want” as issues that fuel both the U.N. and BSG’s plotlines, with enough overlap that Mokhiber insisted Battlestar must surely “owe royalties to the U.N.”
“Freedom from fear and freedom from want.”
Must be nice. Who provides that?
There’s more you probably ought to read, but I’m going to skip to this part (hey, it’s my blog):
Siqueira said that while the U.N. has at times been given a spot in big Hollywood filims(sic), it had been more of a “bit player or prop” in the past. Its recently heightened show business presence stems from the realization that the entertainment industry is “much better at communicating these issues.”
Funny how that works. Music and movies and video games don’t influence the public when it’s something bad they’re accused of, but when it’s something good, well then! Nothing better for it!
This admission was interesting as well:
Eick confessed that the evolution of the show as a lighting rod for political discourse was “surreal” given that the show was initially “dreamed up in sports bars.” He says it was a matter of trying to tell good stories “that were being informed by a sick world.” Eick seemed less shy about pointing a finger of admonishment toward specific political figures. Especially ones nicknamed Dubya. “If we’d done this show ten years later,” he said, it would have been a totally different ballgame.
And then there was this:
As Boucher optimistically posed to the panelists: What can people do to become more politically active?
Mokhiber noted there are no shortage of volunteer opportunities through organizations like Amnesty International, but even more simply than that, he relayed that people ought to “find out what the heck is going on” in the first place.
Siqueira offered up: “Care about one issue deeply, and act.”
We have. It’s called the TEA Party movement. But that’s not what they wanted:
Eick, on the other hand, continued to serve up a more sassy partisan opinion of how to enact change. “Find somebody to beat the hell out of Glen Beck!” he insisted.
Why are Leftists such h8rs and so (vicariously) violent? (Or recently, personally violent?)
