Sharon Stone: Heart of Stone?

By Keen Zhang

American actress Sharon Stone again showed the world how ignorant some Hollywood stars may be, by remarking that the Chinese earthquake that has claimed 65,000 lives was "karma".

Sharon Stone made this cold-blooded statement while she stood on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival on May 24, after accepting an interview with Hong Kong Cable TV.

She was asked if she had heard about the disaster that recently hit China's Sichuan Province, and her answer was:

"Of course I have. You know it was very interesting, because at first, you know, I wasn't very happy about the way the Chinese are treating Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that, because I don't like... that.

"And I've been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics because they've not been nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And all this earthquake stuff happened and I thought: 'Is that karma? When you are not nice the bad things happen to you.'"

Hong Kong Cable TV later interviewed several other international reporters onsite; none agreed with her a bit.

Sharon Stone may have an agenda to defend her "friend" the Dalai Lama at all times. Is that why she dares to make such inhuman and hurtful statements about tens of thousands of innocent Chinese victims?

The so-called high IQ 154 of Sharon Stone hasn't saved her from becoming a political clown desperate to mix politics with a natural disaster that could happen in anywhere on Earth.

Ironically, Wenchuan, the 8.0-magnitude epicenter, is a part of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, one of most significant Tibetan residential areas in China. So is it "karma" for the Dalai Lama and ethnic Tibetan people of China? I guess her "friend" the Dalai Lama wouldn't be happy to hear her talk like that.

Anyway, if her theory stands, then every natural disaster from the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake to the 2006 Katrina hurricane which swept New Orleans, are all of these "karma" for American people?

Sharon Stone's remarks have ignited widespread Chinese rage around the nation. Chinese show business insiders, such as the actors Tong Dawei, Tang Fei, and Huang Yi, all expressed their anger and refused further participation in any of Sharon Stone's films.

"Was it because you had no awareness of the horrible physical and mental pain the Chinese people have to suffer in this earthquake? Or were you just born a cold-blooded mannequin?" the TV star Huang Yi wrote about her in a blog article called The One Who Ignore Lives, Has No Right to Discuss Lives.

Maria Cordero, a Hong Kong presenter, directly called Sharon Stone a "State Enemy" of the Chinese people. She asserted that she would throw away all the Hollywood actress' works in the future. "When this tragedy happened in China, it's okay for her not to offer to help out, but it's not okay to curse the Chinese," she added.

See-Yuen Ng, the Hong Kong movie mogul, said Sharon Stone's remarks lacked basic morality and his cinema line will consider banning the star's films in the future.

"Sharon Stone's remarks shocked and angered all the Chinese and everybody else around the world, " Hong Kong singer Nicholas Wu said. "To call a natural disaster, which killed tens of thousands of people, as 'karma', shows no respect for the Chinese people and no respect for life."

Tens of thousands of furious posts also appeared on Chinese Internet forums. A Shanghai bookstore has removed all the actress' movie products going on sale in China, to voice their protest. Simultaneously, a new nationwide boycott campaign against Stone's sponsor, the fashion giant Christian Dior SA under LVMH group, quickly followed suit.

A Dior rep for their Chinese branch said that their company was "absolutely in disagreement with her opinion". Company executives were holding urgent discussion in hopes of resolving the issue. This is yet another new public relations emergency for LVMH since the French goods and Carrefour boycotts and protests were held in China a month ago. The boycotts were initiated due to some disgraceful behavior by several Paris politicians and Tibetan separatists who tried to cast a shadow on China's Olympic torch relay but backfired.

Sharon Stone's acting career has fallen into an abyss. Clearly her self-anticipated "revival" via Basic Instinct 2 bombed after earning only US$3,200,000 during its debut weekend on March 31, 2006. Ironically, she was invited to the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2007, where she praised China as "a great country".