There is a kind of advocacy that costs nothing and asks nothing. Ben Stiller has been doing that kind for years.
The actor has a documented record of publicly demanding that New York City take homelessness seriously. He has made posts about it. He has said the word “crisis” in public settings. He wrote a letter accusing federal immigration officers of being an “armed militia.” He told the White House “war is not a movie” after someone on the president’s staff included a Tropic Thunder clip in an official Iran strikes promo video.
This week, Breitbart published a video of Stiller walking directly past a homeless man on a sidewalk outside Madison Square Garden, on his way in for a Knicks game. He walked past the person, per the Breitbart description, “like he didn’t exist.” He did not pause. He did not make eye contact. His pace was the pace of a man with somewhere to be and a clear conscience about having it.
Stiller has been courtside at every game of the NBA Finals. He is reportedly filming an HBO documentary about the Knicks’ run. He told ESPN he is “grateful to have that point of view” and finds it “fun to be able to share it.” He said this about his courtside documentary access. He did not say it about the man on the sidewalk.
Stiller also has, separately, told New York that homelessness is a crisis and that people need to notice.
This is not a story about a villain. Most people walk past homeless individuals in cities every day. Most people are not simultaneously building a public record of demanding that the city stop looking away. The video did not catch a hypocrite giving a speech. It caught a man doing something very ordinary, which would be unremarkable except for the speeches.
An actual belief changes your behavior on the sidewalk. A position changes your tweets.
If the people loudest about a problem are the ones least interrupted by it in real life, what exactly does the advocacy accomplish?
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