Daniel Craig, Steve Carell, and Benicio Del Toro have a message about sexual assault

On Tuesday, the White House unveiled its recommendations to colleges on how to prevent and better handle cases of sexual assault on campus. Since the number of people who will read the White House fact sheet or watch Vice President Joe Biden's presentation of the recommendations is limited, the Obama administration also released this public service announcement with some famous men, apparently for men, delivering a simple message: Non-consensual sex is a crime, and it's wrong. Full stop.

The message is an important one, and the casting choice is really interesting. Daniel Craig is James Bond, in previous incarnations a great womanizer, so maybe the idea is that men will listen to him? Other than that, there doesn't seem to be much of a theme: Benicio Del Toro, Steve Carell, Dulé Hill (the star of Psych, I guess, but always President Bartlett's body man Charlie Young to me), and Seth Meyers?

At The Week, Rachel M. Cohen argues that the focus shouldn't be just on college women — this PSA also talks about assault at bars and high schools — and at Slate, Hannah Rosin points to a study showing that in 38 percent of reported rapes last year, the victim was male (a problem the PSA doesn't address). But if you get past the perhaps overly dramatic music, this seems like a pretty good way to make what should be an obvious point, and one that is obviously too-often ignored. --Peter Weber

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up