It is a moot question whether celebrities should be held legally accountable for appearing in advertisements for products of questionable value, since none of them has ever been punished and quite a few have been involved in such scandals.

At least a dozen celebrities, some of whom are very well known, are believed to have acted in commercials promoting health enhancement food products or medicines of little or no value.

Crosstalk performer Hou Yuehua has been the most notorious for having acted in 10 ads that lured viewers with false information.

What has added to his notoriety is his insistence that he has done nothing wrong by endorsing the false or misleading claims of those products.

And, his tongue-in-cheek response during a recent interview - that there was no advertisement in the world that did not exaggerate the functions of the promoted product. "An ad cannot be so called without exaggeration," he claimed.

Hou argued that he had assumed relevant government departments would have approved all the ads before they were published or broadcast.

And so, there was no need for celebrities to cross-check whether the particular product's claims, which they were endorsing, were untrue or misleading, Hou said.

What Hou is saying is that he and his fellow celebrities should be considered mere puppets, acting the way they are required to and saying what they are fed for the handsome payments that they get.

Celebrities like Hou say that if the products they have promoted are not as effective as claimed in the ads or even cause harm to consumers who use them, then the public must approach the manufacturers or advertising companies.

If that is indeed so, then these celebrities, apart from being "brainless", as Hou himself says, have no conscience, no moral compass, and certainly no sense of shame. They are nothing but mere money making entities.

The Food Safety Law stipulates that any organization or individual who endorses products of questionable value, which violate the rights and interests of consumers, should be held legally accountable along with the manufacturers. The Advertisement Law too has a similar stipulation.

Unfortunately, not a single celebrity has ever been punished for their role in "false" advertising.

The 10 ads that this cross-talk performer has acted in promoting food and medicinal products have been explicitly listed as ones with questionable value by local administrations of industry and commerce. Yet, he is still defending his innocence.

Is it that there is something amiss with the country's legal system or do celebrities like Hou have enough clout to protect themselves from being incriminated for any alleged offence?

No one is supposed to be above the law in this country. But on this particular issue, we do have some doubts.

It's not so much a shame on the celebrities as an embarrassment to the country's legal system.

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