Perpetually Outraged, Celebrities Boycott Georgia, Remain Silent on China

I hesitate to use “Hollywood” as a catchall, but the entertainment industry’s surging Georgia boycott seems to be attracting little dissent in Tinseltown. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s cozy relationship with China fails to stoke the outrage of our perpetually outraged celebrity class.

The logic of the Georgia boycott, prompted by recent legislation banning most abortions, is that it’s unethical to do business inside a state with egregious policies, either to discourage their enactment or avoid enabling their enforcement. What does that mean for China?

The Washington Free Beacon helpfully notedon Thursday that CEO Bob Iger said Disney would likely stop filming in Georgia if the legislation goes into effect, all while his company has shot recent movies in countries with strict abortion laws like Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

We’ve addressed Hollywood’s close relationship with China in these pages before. The industry does a great deal of business with Chinese companies, (the market is “still essential for U.S. studios’ bottom lines,” as the Los Angeles Times put it in February) and scripts are regularly altered to placate Chinese censors. As if the censorship of art wasn’t concerning enough to politically engaged celebrities, the country’s human rights record is just a bit worse than Georgia’s.