Culture Blues

Celebrity status is a wonderful thing if you can attain it. Celebrity allows you to wile away your days on your yacht or in your mansion, never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from or if you are going to be able to pay your ridiculous cable bill next month.

When normal people want to make a difference, rather than just assuage some guilt, they think micro and not macro. They donate time at a local food bank, become a Big Brother or Sister. But that’s not good enough for celebrities. Because they’re more interested in making a statement than making a difference.

"We can rebuild this city... right after I make a quick run south of the border."

If you want to be a “hip” celebrity these days you need a cause.  George Clooney has a cause, it’s the genocide going on in Darfur, Brad Pitt has a cause, it’s smoking as much pot as he can get his hands on the rebuilding of New Orleans. Hip causes are all the rage. You can’t be a celebrity without doing some sort of bullshit charity work. Your publicist won’t let you be out in public unless you’re wearing a ribbon or wristband. I know the drill, guys, I was there. For those of you who don’t know, I once had a cause. I wanted to end anorexia, but my “just eat a fucking cheeseburger once in a while you skinny bitch!” t-shirts didn’t quite spread the message.

Here’s an unhip cause: Jerry’s Kids. Over the Labor Day weekend I was flipping channels and saw the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, a yearly circle jerk of people raising money for children with Muscular Dystrophy, basically so they can get on TV and say the name of their Elks Lodge (BPOE) while presenting a shiny new wheelchair to a knot of a child, all while bloated former comedian Jerry Lewis sobs incoherently in the background. By the way, in the interest of raising awareness, Muscular dystrophy (abbreviated MD) refers to a group of genetic, hereditary muscle diseases that weaken the muscles that move the human body. Muscular dystrophies are characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness, defects in muscle proteins, and the death of muscle cells and tissue.

Note: Not an actual doctor.

Here is my problem with Jerry Lewis and his telethon: Does anyone still care about Jerry Lewis? Sure, he’s raised well over a half billion dollars for MD since his telethons began over 40 years ago. But these days, he’s confined to 24 hours of a holiday where we’d all rather be out enjoying the last remnants of a another lost summer, drinking Miller High Life, and eating too much barbequed animal carcasses. It isn’t working.

Jerry, I think it is time for you to ride off into the sunset and give up your chair to a more popular celebrity.  I nominate a Matt Damon to take your place; he’s younger, people under the age of 30 actually know who he is, and the MDA would appeal to that coveted 18-34 demographic everyone keeps yammering on about. By the way, the MDA has one of the lowest scores for national charities in terms of the amount of money that they collect and the amount of money that is donated to help fight Muscular Dystrophy, so putting Jerry out to pasture could only improve matters.

Anyway, forget boring-ass muscular dystrophy, the hip cause right now is autism. Autism effects about 1 in 500 people and is a bio-neurological disorder that is observable in early childhood with symptoms of abnormal self-absorption, characterized by lack of response to other humans and by limited ability or disinclination to communicate and socialize. In other words - you just don’t feel like talking to anybody. If you had this in your 20s or 30s you would just be called fucking weird.

Jenny McCarthy was the first celebrity to bring autism to the mainstream. She has a son with autism that she claims he contracted through his normal vaccinations. What’s newsworthy is that Jenny was able to cure her son through non-traditional methods like hyperbaric chambers, kabbalah, and love.  The even greater thing is that she has written five best selling books about her struggles and triumphs. FIVE!

Uh oh, looks like someone just told Jenny that the scientific community doesn't believe that vaccines cause autism.

Jenny McCarthy has been able to parlay a son that may just not want to talk to her because she‘s vapid into a multi-million dollar multi-platform deal with Oprah. Autism must be hot because Oprah thinks it is.

Jenny McCarthy has been able to turn around her flagging career by taking up a cause, shoving her way into the public forum, and cramming questionable intelligence into our gullible brains. I commend Jenny for being a comfort to some parents of autistic children – that’s a wonderful thing, so long as their kids still get their fucking polio vaccinations. But let’s be frank: just like Jerry Lewis, where would Jenny McCarthy be without her “cause”?

Finally, we have Bono. Bono is the lead singer of U2 (the 80’s version of Coldplay). Anyone want to venture a guess as to Bono’s cause?  AIDS? No. (too cliché)  Breast cancer? No, the pink ribbon would clash with his sunglasses.  His hip cause is the elimination of third world debt through his charity ONE.  Here is ONE’s mission statement:

“At ONE, we achieve change through advocacy. We hold world leaders to account for the commitments they've made to fight extreme poverty, and we campaign for better development policies, more effective aid and trade reform. We also support greater democracy, accountability and transparency to ensure policies to beat poverty are implemented effectively.”

Forgiving national debts one condescending smooch at a time.

What?!

Here’s what is wrong with Bono’s ONE:  In Africa leaders change with whoever is holding the guns at the time.  Where do you have the time to affect changes to problems that have taken hundreds of years to create?

But that is the genius of it! Bono can’t create change and, if he has half a brain, he knows this. What ONE does is keep him in the public’s eye. He gets photo opportunities with world leaders and talks to them about how the monies that have been lent to these impoverished African nations should be just wiped away. I do not think that an African nation has ever paid back a dime of that money and I don’t think any nation ever will.  What are these lender nations going do? Go in and foreclose?

Bono has set himself up with a nice cushy gig as an ambassador whenever the fuck U2 realizes that they are only relevant to 30 and 40 year olds who want to hear them sing “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” If his charity work is any indication, he should make one hell of a politician.

It has been about 25 years since “We Are the World” and there are children still starving in Africa.  It has been 40 years since the discovery of muscular dystrophy and autism has been around since the TV show “St. Elsewhere”.   Will we ever find a cure for any of these problems? I don’t know and neither do celebrities. Fame is a wonderful thing; it can be used to raise awareness and cash for important causes, but it can also be used as a self-perpetuating mechanism, all in the name of altruism. Simply throwing around the weight of your own celebrity makes you look like an egomaniacal asshole to the asshole police (I’m the sheriff). All I’m asking is for a healthy dose of cynicism before we little people go opening up our hearts and wallets for whatever hip cause is the new equivalent of a Gucci handbag. You could say that my favorite cause is the war on ignorance.

I’m accepting donations.