Idol Chatter

I can't believe that I am writing about American Idol, but I think I have to this one time. Last night, Fox Network broadcast an extended, star studded version of its weekly showcase of some genuine talent and America's truly bad taste (evidenced by the longevity of Sanjaya Malakar). Its purpose was to entertain and to fund raise for charitable causes such as fighting AIDS in Africa, helping Katrina survivors and providing better education to those in poorer parts of America to end illiteracy. All fine causes to donate to and, given the viewer-ship draw Idol has, a rather expedient cash cow for the respective charities.

All well and good. I was flipping to other things and just catching it on the breaks. While it was on, however, it did strike me that they were covering their African component of the evening quite a bit more than the others. Its a big continent with a lot of problems. If they were allotting time as to be proportional to geographic size, wouldn't that be cleaver of them?

Some of the footage they aired was really compelling. Well, not the bits where Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell were sitting in various shantytown dwellings with umpteen number of orphaned children, patting them all on the back and giving half hugs telling them everything was going to be OK. That was crap. It felt like wasted air time. It made aforementioned presenters seem impotent and hollow. That they were profoundly affected by the suffering they saw was not in question. They were. And who wouldn't be? So the Idol machine was not providing us with anything more in that respect than we could have found in any other TV based fund raiser. Que Sally Struthers entrance.

Then it hit me. There was no useful information being given. There was some talk of "You," the viewing audience, having the power to change the world. And how is it that we make this great change for the betterment of those who are suffering? Money? Give them your money and everything is going to be alright. I am not sure if this is a uniquely American phenomenon or not, but the gist of most of these fund raisers seems to be geared towards cultivating pity and then relieving your visceral grief and empathy by throwing money at the problem. Then you've done your part and can go on with your life.

You might be saying "How dare you belittle the chartable spirit of America." Or something like it. I am doing no such thing. What I am doing is illuminating the fact that we are being given the short shrift from fund raisers like the one that Idol put on last night. At no time did any of the vignettes on Africa or the other causes say why things were the way they are. This is not so much a question for the illiteracy in poorer areas of the country, but its still relatively valid. The spread of AIDS in Africa is terrible and we all know that a person gets infected with it via intercourse with another infected person. Mostly, previously infected men will infect healthy women infecting and impregnating them all at once. This is why there are so many orphans in impoverished African nations. Its a cycle. A cycle that isn't widely discussed here or there. What they also do not mention is that a big reason HIV/AIDS is so pervasive in African countries is that many men are promiscuous and it is socially acceptable for them to be so. Their wives may know this but if they refuse their husbands advances, it is not uncommon at all for the man to beat her. Its also not uncommon for these beatings to result in her death. So there are massive cultural problems that aggravating the spread of HIV to such a degree that it begs the question of why aren't we hearing more about this side of it?

Another sub-issue worth mentioning is where the money goes. How much goes to bureaucracy and management on this end? How much makes it overseas? From there, how much gets absorbed by the governments? How much gets taken by corruption, gangs, militias, etc...? I bring this up not to be cynical. Its just the reality of the world that we and they live in. So, is it more efficacious to donate money or affect change by some other means?

On last night's Idol, poverty was the leitmotif of the evening. That and a whole lot of feel good music and celebrity hyjinx. The three go hand in hand, don't they? And, in the end, things like this do more good than harm. My concern is that people will think that this is enough when its really not nearly enough. Its good to give to charity. You help a cause and get a tax write off. But you should also, provided you're able, give of your time and energy. You can be a mentor, you can work at a soup kitchen, you can tutor, you can join projects like Habitat for Humanity and a great many more things. What no one really talks about, especially in commercialized venues like Idol, is that you can also vote with your dollar. You can send a message to the marketplace by buying certain goods over others. You can purchase products generated by women's cooperatives, you can go to farmer's markets, you can not buy gas from certain vendors because they obtain their product from nations that have bad human rights records. This list, like the lists of charitable causes and philanthropies, is endless.

One last time; Idol Celebrity Fund Raiser and other such things like it = Good. Well, rather, they're trying to do good and that's better than doing nothing at all. Just don't get to thinking thats all there is to it. You're not even scratching the surface.

By the way, if Melinda Doolittle doesn't win, America really has no good taste.

Katrina, the Poor and Security

After reading this post from The American Scene, I was left with a couple of burrs in my saddle about the way that America is set up. It has long been my opinion that the social structure and economy of this country are far too reliant on the automobile. And yes, fossil fuels as well. I am sure there are those out there will say “Yeah, so?” So, seeing that so many people decided to stay in their homes or in their towns/cities despite grave warnings warrants an examination of their decision making process. The post from TAS looks into that and determines that many people were living paycheck to paycheck or were so precarious in their living situations, i.e. they would rather stay and guard what they have lest their belongings be taken by looters and risk life and limb rather than just forfeit it all and leave it to fate to decide how they end up. As Reihan states, if your means only provide a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, you are “always one paycheck away from disaster.”

So, many of these people were simply unable to leave. They didn’t have cars. They couldn’t afford cabs. And, indirectly because of the social conditions that often accompany poor neighborhoods; they lacked a community to fall back upon that could bear them. The option to rely on family was not their either because of economic status or simply sheer lack of kin. They couldn’t afford to save themselves.

But this is all peripheral to the point I want to make.

My borrowing the phrase from John Edwards is by no means an endorsement of him, but the fallout from Katrina has clearly illustrated beyond any doubt that there are truly two Americas. Oversimplifying it for the sake of this argument, the “Haves” own cars and/or are able to do things to insure themselves against harm, which in this case was to get out of New Orleans. The “Have Nots” were unable to do much and, either out of desperation or inability to find (and pay for) transportation, stayed and forced to endure what came. Many paid for that choice, if you can call it that, with their lives. I am nauseous at the prospect of whatever the final death toll may be.

The point is, this country is out of balance in so many ways and we have to do something about it. The best way to address a huge problem is to start looking for simple ways to solve it, or at least part of it. What if those people who didn’t have cars did have access to trains buses, or other mass transit? This one element would not have solved the problem of getting people out of Katrina’s path, but it certainly would have helped.

What I would love to do now is shoot off on a tangent that imparts my loathing of car culture and the status that it carries and how the automobile industry has been the single largest malignancy in this country since World War II. However, that will be for another post. What I will say is that it is America’s dependence on the car, abetted by the oil business has been, in the long run, at the very least, partially responsible for the class divide in the United States today. Granted, the greed of the American consumer goes hand in hand with them. How many SUVs and luxury lines of automobiles do you need? Did you notice who stayed or was left behind in New Orleans?

Follow me in this leap. What if we broadened the idea of security beyond protection from religious fundamentalists trying to kill us? (Note that I left out the word Islamic) What if security applied to the overall strength and resiliency of our society? You could even include the notion of sustainability in defining security. So, to beat a dead horse, our fuel supply is not secure because we are at the mercy of foreign powers who set the price and as a result, have undue influence on our economic security.

Just watch the United States in the coming weeks call on OPEC to increase its production in efforts to help our recovery from this cataclysm. Sure it will be in the spirit of charity, but truly, it will be just like the dealer giving a junkie a bigger hit to tide him over until he gets through this rough patch.

As with 9/11, the toll will be great and the recovery will take years. What concerns me now is how we will recover. Will state and local leaders be able to see the problems that led to this for what they really were and are? Will our national leaders be able to see past politics and give the affected region what it needs in order to recover and make things better than they were before? Will the American people be able to recognize that there was a bold dividing line in race and class when observing who was affected by this? It will take leadership and vision. Again, as sad as this all of this is, it represents a tremendous opportunity for change in a positive direction that can serve as a glowing example to the rest of the country, if not the world.

Then again, we could just let it all go, as Dennis Hastert thinks.