Gere Up for Justice!
April 28th, 2007There are plenty of reasons to arrest Hollywood actors and actresses. Poor films, attention whoring, political crusaders — and I still want to get back at Tom Cruise for Eyes Wide Shut! But this is a travesty of a joke.
An Indian court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, saying their kiss at a public function violated the country’s strict public obscenity laws, media reports said. Judge Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants Thursday in the northwestern city of Jaipur after a local citizen filed a complaint charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Gupta earlier viewed television footage of the event, which he called “highly sexually erotic,” saying the pair violated India’s strict public obscenity laws. Gere and Shetty “transgressed all limits of vulgarity and have the tendency to corrupt the society,” PTI quoted the judge as saying. Such cases against celebrities — often filed by publicity seekers — are common in conservative India. They add to a backlog of legal cases that has nearly crippled the country’s judicial system.
I guess what marijuana cases are to America’s legal system, publicity-seeking moralists are to India’s.
Justice shouldn’t operate like this anywhere, ever. It ties up the system and corrupts it. Shame.