Another question occured to me:

If someone you respected -- say, oh, of the caliber of Bertrand Russell -- appeared in an anti-Iraq war commercial and was paid for it -- would you lose respect for him and consider him scum? Suppose that you knew for a fact that the person was only trying to make money to take care of his family, or needed the money to help pay his college bills?

How would this person differ from Bob Dylan doing a commercial for Victoria's Secret?