Village Voice Media, fresh off its triumph putting Ashton Kutcher in his place for trying to bring awareness to the problem of human trafficking, has directed its crosshairs to an even bigger celebrity and a more vexing issue: George Clooney's advocacy against the genocide in Darfur.
"Clooney and his fellow nay-sayers claim that the genocide in Darfur has claimed the lives of 400,000 and rendered more than 2.5 million people homeless," the Voice declared in a vitriolic investigative piece, due to hit newsstands July 7. "And yet, if you do the math, those figures don't hold up. If you look at how many Janjaweed have actually been arrested for, let alone convicted of, murder and rape, or the number of members of Minnawi's SLA brought in for questioning for their alleged slaughter of the Fur tribes, there's been precious few, if any. So, really, how can six or seven people just accused of some shenanigans be guilty of the massacre of 400,000?
"Moreover, if you look at the real-estate sections of local newspapers, you don't see very many homes up for sale in the regions ostensibly affected," the Voice piece continued. "So the number of people who have been displaced by any sort of 'unrest' that may or may not be going on, by sheer logic, must not be anywhere in the area of 2.5 million. More like 200,000 or 300,000. It's really just a statistical blip."
The Voice's trenchant exposé of clueless do-gooders trying to involve themselves in internal Sudanese matters will run concurrent with a glossy, 16-page advertisement spread paid for by Sudan's Ministry of Tourism encouraging Westerners to visit some of the "less murder-y" portions of the African nation.