Celebrity: a famous person, especially in entertainment or sport. They have the platform and opportunities to speak out for those sentient beings who don’t have a voice.
Voiceless: animals come to mind and my pet subject (excuse the pun). There are other voiceless including many humans.
Joaquin Phoenix is a brilliant actor. He won best actor for The Joker. He was spellbinding in it. I believe this award speech was made at those Oscars. I think it took a bit of courage to be a voice for the voiceless at the Oscars. The whole party mode is the backdrop. And suddenly he has to be very serious and talk about cows. It was a great speech. The applause was a bit faint probably because of the reason stated. I would doubt that the audience in the auditorium were that interested in dairy farming, but he was talking to the world.
And he is a celebrity, and he had the platform to be the voice of animals particularly milk producing cows in the dairy industry. He could not pass up the opportunity. He’s obviously a person committed to animal welfare as is Ricky Gervais.
Gervais has spoken up against cat declawing many times. An unpopular subject. I should know as I have written hundreds of pages on the topic, but those pages barely contribute to the success of this website. They probably get the odd reading. And yet cat declawing is probably the most important topic concerning domestic cats in the USA today because it is mass, legal cat cruelty, and it can be stopped at a stroke (if there was the will and decency).
I am also a great fan of Brian May, the Queen guitarist. He is very generous with his time and money. He hates fox hunting as much as I do and millions of others. Fox hunting is as barbaric as cat declawing and trophy hunting. For me they are in the same league. All three are unnecessary. In the UK fox hunting is banned but trail hunting is legal. There was talk of overturning the ban hence Brian May’s tweet. I don’t think it will happen. The posh, Tory establishment are the ones who want to fox hunt with dogs on horses and dressed in fancy costumes. Ghastly.
Both May and Gervais use their celebrity to be voices for the voiceless. Anyone who cares about animal welfare should speak up. You don’t have to be a celebrity, but it helps as their voice carries much further like the roar of a tiger.
I would expect a number of Americans who listened to Joaquin Phoenix’s speech to have become vegetarians or vegans as a consequence. You can feel the emotion in his voice. At the end he refers to his late brother, River Phoenix, and he can barely speak. He dries up with emotion. His brother died at the age of 23 of drug intoxication.
Below are some more articles on animal welfare. I can’t promise that the YouTube video will always play as it is served by YouTube computers and sometimes the videos on YouTube are deleted.
