→ Who’s exploiting the Amish: Lancaster businesses or a TV show?: Nancy Eshelman | PennLive.com
Oh my, Nancy throws down the gauntlet! Too bad her thinking is sloppy.
She equates local businesses capitalizing on the Amish presence in Lancaster county with the demeaning and vulgar misrepresentation they suffer at the hands of the stars and producers of ‘Amish Mafia’. This seems to be one way people have been interpreting the controversy surrounding the Respect Amish movement’s call to boycott the show: Because some local businesses make money from the tourism industry that has evolved around the Amish they are hypocrites for labeling the show ‘exploitative’.
Implicit in this idea is a false equivalence — that the profits made via tourism are morally equatable with the profits made from the show. And if the show is making money in an unethical fashion, then it follows that it is immoral and unethical to make money from businesses based around ‘Amish toursim’, or any type of tourism that focuses on a specific people and culture, if one follows her logic.
