"Blood Diamond" and the Future of Accessorizing...

Where would we be without Hollywood to provide us poor schnooks with moral direction? Some reviews of Blood Diamond - first, the New York Post:

LEFTY voodoo: the belief that anytime anyone in the world is hurting, America must be sticking a pin in a doll. "Blood Diamond" holds that the 1990s civil war in Sierra Leone stemmed not from that country's long history of lawlessness and corruption but from the sparkly ring fingers of our Melissas and Ashleys.

Picture Indiana Jones reading aloud a couple of huffy editorials from the New York Times while he's dodging boulders and you'll get the idea.

Zwick, the "Thirtysomething" creator who still proclaims his points with blaring TV earnestness, is flexing his narcissism, seeing the world through his American guilt. He wants Americans to demand certification that the diamonds we buy are "conflict-free." A certificate! No chance of those being forged by the world all-stars of corruption!

Next, The New York Daily News weighs in:

Beware a Hollywood movie that ends with a plea for social action. Chances are it's trying to convince you you've just seen something more important than you have.
That actually may be true of Ed Zwick's pointed spectacle "Blood Diamond." The movie, about the intrigue over a walnut-size pink diamond, is an old-fashioned adventure story, while its backdrop is the serious contemporary subject of how the international diamond trade fuels civil wars in unstable African countries.
But if a filmmaker can't work his message into his movie, a disclaimer at the end telling us how to behave at the jewelry store is both an insult and a distraction.

Then, you get the message to add a fifth "C" to your diamond-shopping guide: In addition to cut, color, clarity and carat-weight, be sure to ask your jeweler whether the diamond you're considering comes from a "conflict" country.
Assuming he knows, he would surely tell you rather than take your money. No?

Of course, at the Washington Post, the liberalism oozes down the food chain to the movie critic, who gushes over the lines that make our other reviewers queasy:

....the first two hours of "Blood Diamond," which was filmed in South Africa and captures with vivid, kinetic energy the beauty of the African countryside, the cultural mash-ups of its cities and the rank horror of its myriad bloody wars, here put firmly in the context of 300 years of colonization and exploitation

See the top review again about the lefty voodoo doll, and so on...here's more:

Zwick strikes a terrific balance between Indiana Jones-style adventure and an ongoing dialogue about the uneasy and largely opaque politics of globalization. How many women would want that diamond engagement ring, Connelly's character asks at one point, if they knew someone had lost a hand getting it?

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have stumbled upon the birth of a new left-wing crusade! Maybe diamonds can be the new fur, and we can throw blood on any women who dares sport an engagement ring! Maybe Hollywood starlets will demand their brooches and rings be made of "non-conflict" stones like agate, jasper, and obsidian! (yeah, right!)

I wonder what Ann Homaday, the Washington Post movie critic, wears on her finger? Or around her neck? Or in her ears?

Those who own "blood diamonds" should not be casting...stones?