[Dean's World] Dave Price: Good Intentions

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Posted by Dave Price:
Good Intentions
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1198554083.shtml


   Will Smith is getting [1]a lot of heat over some too-nuanced words
   about the greatest symbol of evil from the 20th Century:

     Smith told a Scottish paper that Hitler "didn't wake up going, 'Let
     me do the most evil thing I can do today.' ... I think he woke up
     in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to
     do what he thought was 'good.'"

   I've been a big fan of Will Smith from way back in his Fresh Prince of
   Bel Air days, when I told people he was a good actor (although the
   show was forgettable) and would be in movies someday. Today it's hard
   to name a bigger star, and as such everything he says is parsed to
   death. But that's the price of success in a free society.
   He has said some truly cringe-inducing things before; I remember
   seeing him on Letterman, maybe ten years ago, saying he believed AIDS
   came from a government laboratory (he cringed himself when he said it,
   so maybe he understood that statement was a little out there). He was
   pretty young at the time, so maybe chalk that up to youth and the life
   of an entertainer.
   Let's be clear on what this is not: this is not anti-Semitism or
   sympathy for anything Adolf Hitler did. This is just a somewhat naive
   philsophical statement to the effect of "everyone thinks they're doing
   good even when they're not," the theme of I Am Legend, the screen
   adaptation of which he is starring in, in which

   ([2]spoiler)

   a man realizes that the mutants he is killing are now civilization and
   he is the werewolf or vampire, the legend.
   ([3]hide)

   Will does apparently have some connection to Scientology, at least
   [4]according to his wiki, so that probably is where the
   "reprogramming" reference comes from. Still, it's hard to find
   anything disturbing in Will's statement; its just some amateur
   philosophizing with a poorly chosen example, sensationalized into more
   than it really is.

References

   1. http://instapundit.com/archives2/013334.php
   2. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1198554083.html
   3. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1198554083.html
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_smith