Last week, Mila Kunis gave an interview in which she revealed that she has a monthly recurring donation going to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. Kunis isn’t alone in this. If you remember, after the election, about 72,000 people–28% of all donations–gave in Pence’s name, and for each one, he received a thank you card sent to his office. I love that Kunis set up a recurring donation, meaning Pence gets a card every month, notifying him that an anonymous donation was made in his name to the organization he’s dedicated his career to defunding. Kunis called it a “peaceful protest.”
Not everyone found the story as charming though. Despite getting up in arms over frequent misunderstandings of what actually constitutes First Amendment violations (like whenever a college decides it doesn’t want to host a white supremacist on campus), those on the far right sure can’t handle a bit of free speech when it’s regarding something that offends them. So they’ve taken to Twitter to announce their planned boycott of Jim Beam bourbon unless the company drops Kunis as their spokesperson. (She also did heavy promotion of Jim Beam in the same interview.)
They expressed their displeasure with using the hashtag #BoycottJimBeam. A lot of people are claiming they’re pouring out bottles of Jim Beam, which … they know the company still gets their money then, right? A few also say they’re making donations to anti-choice groups like the Susan B. Anthony List in Kunis’ name, something Mike Pence felt the need to comment on.
I'm honored. Thanks for all @SBAList does for life. I'm in. https://t.co/3wWGRHc7yU
— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) November 4, 2017
Some also inexplicably made donations to the NRA in Kunis’ name, I guess just to prove that there’s only one amendment they actually care about and it sure as hell isn’t the first.
Here’s where I’d normally post some of the tweets calling for a boycott, but they’re just exhausting and not worth the attention. If you’d like, you can scroll through the hashtag here, but it’s exactly what you’re expecting. Blah blah Hollywood elite, blah blah killing babies (nothing on reproductive health or the Supreme-Court-granted right to safe abortion access, though), and insistence that Kunis “shut her mouth” and “leave politics out of selling whiskey.’ You know, the usual incredulity that a human being has opinions in addition to a job, and anger that those opinions don’t line up with their own.
Because that’s all this is about. It’s not a belief that celebrities shouldn’t express political opinions. If it were, they’d be telling James Woods and Tim Allen to stay out of politics. Celebrities using their platform to share their politics is fine as long as it’s a conservative celebrity.
And if they feel this strongly about denying Mila Kunis her right to voice her opinions, both on Conan and in the form of donations to an organization of her choosing, then surely they’ll finally realize why the rest of us take issue with, say, giving a platform to violent bigots spewing hate in print, in protests, or on college campuses.
I’m all for a boycott if it’s a cause you believe in. And I’m in favor of public expressions of disapproval. That’s, like, 3/4 of my job and most of my free time. But it’s hard to take these people seriously when they wear their hypocrisy this openly.
(via Uproxx, featured image: Shutterstock)
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