Ashton Kutcher And The Village Voice Duke It Out On Twitter Over His Anti-Child Prostitution Campaign

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by Jon Bershad | 12:23 pm, June 30th, 2011

» 13 comments

Last night, Ashton Kutcher, the actor who’s soon to be one of the “full men” on Two and a Half Men, used his immensely popular Twitter feed to go on a lengthy tirade against none other than the Village Voice. In just an hour, Kutcher launched an angry volley of 11 tweets at the New York publication. The reason? This recently published article in which the Voice accuses the anti-sex trafficking campaign begun by Kutcher and his wife, the actress Demi Moore, for “reek[ing] of frat boy humor” and, more importantly, being based entirely on a lie.

The article alleges that the figure touted by the campaign, that between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves work in the United States today, is completely inaccurate. The Voice claims that the figure comes from a study written by two University of Pennsylvania professors entitled The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. That study was apparently only referring to children who were “at risk” of becoming child prostitutes, not how many were actually currently employed. Furthermore, the Voice has quotes from another professor who says that the study has “no scientific credibility.”

While the article takes swipes at news organizations that have repeated the figure like The New York Times, CNN, and C-Span, the bulk of the shots are directed specifically at Kutcher and Moore’s campaign. The accompanying image is a picture of the couple and the snarky headline, “Real Men Get Their Facts Straight,” is a direct knock on the campaign’s slogan, “Real men don’t buy girls.” Also, the article talked to one of the “premier charity consultant” at Global Philanthropy Group, the organization that helped Kutcher and Moore start the campaign. The consultant, Maggie Neilson, seems to readily admit that the figures the campaign is based on aren’t true.

“But if you are a highly paid consultant, mustn’t you pair the juvenile humor with accurate numbers to maintain credibility instead of letting your clients regurgitate the outrageous ’100,000 to 300,000′ statistic?

Not an easy task, says Maggie Neilson, whose previous work was in the hot, hot, hot area of microfinance. Getting data about sex slavery was not easy, she says: “Versus most social issues I’ve worked on, there is actually a dearth of data—so it was absolutely cobbled together.”

Accuracy is not a major concern for Maggie Neilson.

‘All of the core data we use gets attacked all the time,’ she says. ‘The challenge is, it’s that or nothing, right? And I don’t frankly care if the number is 200,000, 500,000, or a million, or 100,000—it needs to be addressed. While I absolutely agree there’s a need for better data, the people who want to spend all day bitching about the methodologies used I’m not very interested in.’”

With the article seeming to single he and Moore out specifically, it’s unsurprising Kutcher would be angry. And he clearly was:

This morning, the Village Voice was more than happy to play along:

An interesting wrinkle to this whole thing (and the situation that Kutcher is alluding to in his tweets) is that the Village Voice, in their own words, has “a stake in this discussion.” Here is an Editor’s Note that accompanies the article:

“Editor’s note:
Congress hauled in Craigslist on September 15, 2010. There, feminists, religious zealots, the well-intentioned, law enforcement, and social-service bureaucrats pilloried the online classified business for peddling ’100,000 to 300,000′ underage prostitutes annually.

Those same numbers had already inspired terrified politicians, who let loose hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade to prohibitionists bent on ending the world’s oldest profession.

The Craigslist beat-down was absurdist theater.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security hearing on “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking” culminated with the humbled attorneys from Craigslist announcing that they would close down their adult classified business.

The First Amendment was shouted down in the name of children.

Village Voice Media watched with more than passing interest.

From its earliest days, the Village Voice has run adult classifieds. Today, those classifieds are hosted online at Backpage.com.

Having run off Craigslist, reformers, the devout, and the government-funded have turned their guns upon Village Voice Media.

Solicited by advocates, such websites as Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and others in the mainstream media raised the alarm that America’s children have been enslaved in prostitution, thanks to the Internet.

It is true that Village Voice Media has a stake in this discussion.

But the facts speak for themselves.”

Right now, the fight is at a stand still as the West Coast-bound Kutcher has been silent since last night. However, much of Twitter eagerly awaits to see where this feud will go.

Below, watch a clip of Kutcher and Moore explaining the campaign last April on Piers Morgan Tonight:

Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Real Men Don't Buy Girls, Sex Trafficking, The Village Voice

justanotherconservative

so what is this guy saying?? that there are too few chidren being exploited for sex or too many or what????? badly written article, guys.
mlb

Ashton has every right to be furious – the numbers are a moving target because of the nature of the crime. It is all done in secret and underage children who have been traumatized aren’t the most reliable source of information.

His point is that even ONE child, is to high and shining a light on the plight of those whose lives are enslaved is very real. Village Voice should be defending the work of Ashton and Demi not ridiculing it. It says alot about their politics and true endeavors for social justice. I guess they are only “caring” liberals when they get to make up the facts and numbers themselves. what a bunch of hypocrites.
Azarkhan

The Village Voice and Ashton Kutcher deserve each other.
lane

Good for ashton and demi for shedding light on the horror of sex slavery and child prostitution in the US and worldwide.

Who cares if their stats are wrong, it’s widespread and it’s horrific. Real men don’t buy girls, absolutely! Good for them. The Village should be ashamed.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-Kennedy/1439463341 Bruce

Everyone caught up in the manutia, of the story, while ignoring the real issue. I don’t give a “ship” about what the real numbers are. If just one child is being subjected to this horror, it is one child too much. It is a problem and it must be dealt with. You don’t give to a cause because it does or doesn’t have enough victims, you give because you believe in the cause.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Emerson-Powell/546564845 David Emerson Powell

So someone is going after people who rape children and who goes after that someone? The Village Voice. This is not really a surprise.
BoomShakalaka

Damn…that guy is seriously pissed…
Wtf is wrong with those idiots at Village BS?
Not enough sex slaves to care?Really?
They wanna pick a fight on numbers with a guy who cares about the issue?
What a bunch of grade A losers,they make me sick man.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

My questioning of the numbers and my defense of the campaign has been archived in response to the previous Mediaite post.

I too think the numbers (as they pertain to the US) are most likely inflated or are toward the lower end of the scale, but because my original interpretation of the campaign was that it had “see something, do something” goals and because people were talking about the topic, then it might be called a success.
joess

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gargoyle

Who cares if their stats are wrong, it’s widespread and it’s horrific.
Real men don’t buy girls, absolutely!

They need to change their slogan. It is widespread and it is worldwide… and unfortunately it’s only girls about half the time.
Tedderman

This is the kind of “Twissue” Ashton can really sink his teeth into. I’m sure the reason for the break is merely for something like sleep but rest assured,Ashton will not let this rest.
RealityCheck99

So I guess it never occurred to anyone that if prostitution was legalized, licensed and controlled that two things would happen. First there would be less interest in back alley establishments with human slaves and second law enforcement could concentrate on helping people who don’t wish to engage in that business. Yes there are a lot of people who do that because they need money for drugs or to keep from being beaten by their pimps. But if it was controlled you could enforce licensing that requires drug testing. How much money have we wasted on the wars on Drugs and Prostitution. I want no one doing something they don’t want to do but there are women that are more than happy to provide the service or there wouldn’t be so many prostitutes on the streets. Let the women that want to do that work do that work like in Europe and the rest of the world and go after the traffickers and pimps that force women that don’t want to do that work into doing it. How much more effect would we have on stopping trafficking if we didn’t wast time and money busting hookers that want to do that work and that will be back on the streets tomorrow – or the high end escorts that only movie stars and politicians seem to be able to afford.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Henry-Hank-E-Scott/520141585 Henry Hank E Scott

Kutcher so knows whereof he speaks. Backpage.com is a major trafficker of illegal sex — prostitution, in other words. And a lot of it involves children. It’s also a major money maker for the financially challenged Village Voice Media Company, which will fight to the death to keep this disgusting site alive. When I was an executive at Creative Loafing Inc. (owner of the Chicago Reader, Washington City Paper, CL Atlanta, etc.) we ended our Backpage.com relationship because of this. While we were Backpage.com partners I found myself confronted with horrible ads promoting sex with children, an ad by a woman trying to sell her baby, etc. If Kutcher reads this and wants help, I can be reached at hankscott@mac.com. Backpage.com is evil