I confess: I’m an American Idol fan. It’s not that I like the music or the celebrity hoo-ha. Rather, each week a group of young adults put their hearts and souls on the line. A waitress from a small town. A backup singer who never thought she had the talent to star. A farm girl who had never been on an airplane until she was flown to Los Angeles. They are inspirational.
Of course, Idol is a mega-mega-million dollar hit. So whoever has that knack of striking for gold came up with the idea of “Idol Gives Back.†Broadcast last night, it featured the starving and AIDs-stricken children of Africa. The all-star singing guests were background.
It may have turned me off of Idol forever.
Exactly what Fox and the Idol judges Cowles, Abdul and Jackson were giving back wasn’t clear. Coca-cola’s five million was amply rewarded in commercials. Con Agra’s donation? Hmmm… who profits from food aid to Africa? The rest of us saps were implored to donate any dollar we could. (Oh, did I mention that Idol got 70 million votes for that show, almost double the norm? Who’s giving and who’s receiving here?)
The scenes and stories from Africa were heart-wrenching. An orphaned 12-year old boy serving as surrogate father to his 7 year sister and living in an 8×10 “house†is a lesson to us all. Forget Idol Gives Back. Here’s the real lesson.
Dollars do matter. But let’s not use the occasional donation to blind us from what’s really going on. Bad stuff around the world doesn’t just happen. Everybody is complicit. Each of us is complicit. The truth is that American food policy serves American interests far more than the starving people in Africa, and we could demand that it be changed. The truth is that our over the top consumption of energy is contributing to global warming, which is having the most devastating effect on the poorest countries around the world. American farm subsidies combined with NAFTA have put Mexican corn farmers out of business, encouraging illegal immigration to the U.S.
Things happen for a reason.
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