Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain. (The Bat Signal.)

Commenting on the decision of a few pop music stars to give back the money they received from K. Daffy for personal appearances, Ed Driscoll references “the Great Celebrity Implosion of the 21st-century.”

I prefer the explanation in one of the comments that follows. T.S. remarks that most of the pop stars are like Nelly Furtado.

Nelly Furtado is a garden-variety Gen Y arts community fashionable liberal from Vancouver. It’s probably a mistake to make too much of her politics. A deep thinker she likely ain’t. She went from being a high school candy raver, to a hip hop chick, to a neo- folkie-singer/songwriter-hippie chick, to a glamorous pop star (and symbol of young single female sexual “empowerment”). Her biggest hit song was about being “Promiscuous,” bit in its verses, she still managed to give shout outs to Amnesty International and Steve Nash.

Ms. Furtado’s politics have always appeared to be those of the kind of trendy liberal who thinks that taking the positions of the fashionably reflexive Left equates to being socially conscious and doing the right thing. In giving the $ million back to Mr. al-Qaddafi, she’s most likely doing what she thinks (or her PR people think) is the right thing to do.

So why is she – and some of the others like her – giving the money back (or to charity)? Have they realized that K. Daffy was a bad man?   Well, not at the time.

“In terms of pop culture relevancy, Anti-American Muslim dictators from North Africa were thought to be pretty freakin’ cool when Bush was president. After all, those guys were standing up to the oppressor and raising a fist in the air and speaking truth to power and showing solidarity and trying to change the world and all of that. So until the recent Libyan uprising, it made all the sense in the world for American entertainers to perform for Qaddafi … Plus, for the old-timers, Qaddafi’s animus toward and defiance of Ronald Reagan earned him big props, though that hasn’t been much of a factor for a while — 1986 was way before most young fashionable liberals’ time (Ms. Furtado included).”

What changed? Obama ...The Lightworker  

But now that President Obama has decided that it’s time to officially condemn Qaddafi, the message has been sent like the Bat Signal to everyday fashionable Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial liberals — hipsters, SWPL, single city girls, college students, Bikhram yoga instructors, NYT readers, AOLHuffington Post readers, DJ’s, bartenders, news reporters, advertising executives, entertainment professionals, etc. — that Quaddafi is a BAD GUY. If President Obama says you’re bad, then you’re bad. And now that the President has decided it’s time to call Qaddafi bad, everybody knows that Qaddafi is indeed bad. You know, like Mubarak and the Governor of Wisconsin.

So it’s a little harsh to rake Nelly Furtado over the coals for being a hypocrite. She’s probably very sincerely trying to do the right thing. She just lives in a world in which Left Wing and low-information liberal narratives are the rule. And in that world, al-Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain.

I wish I had said that.