Uberfluff

It's going to be hard to get at my point here without coming off like an incredible jerk, so I'm not even going to try.


I hate the way our culture deals with charity now.


I'm not going to claim that there was ever a time when people were more tasteful about their charitable endeavors and did things like give anonymously and such.  I'm not a fan of "good old days" pronouncements, as I tend to feel that humans have always been selfish assholes.  But there had to at least have been a time when people were less awful about it . . . or at least had a better sense of shame at their own self-glorifying efforts.


Obviously, I'm thinking here about Haiti specifically, but it really goes for just about any human tragedy in modern culture.  We have a bunch of people who have experienced something horrific, and who are in great need.  Various organizations mobilize to meet that.  People are moved to donate to these efforts.  This is good.  


Here's what's not good:  like a vulture, George Clooney (and whatever celebrity feels like patting him/herself on the back that day--but almost always Clooney) immediately jumps into the press with big announcements about his incredibly generous celebrity fundraising endeavor, and all of a sudden, everyone is running around making self-congratulatory speeches about their charitable intentions.  (Like the couple who decided to donate the food budget from their wedding reception to the Haitian earthquake victims.  Lovely gesture.  Doing interviews about how generous you are and how much you hope other people are inspired by your example?  Tacky and annoying as hell.  Accepting thousands of dollars in donations to your own  wedding after announcing your charitable act to the world?  Makes me suspect your intentions in the first place.)


I guess what really annoys me about the celebrity bandwagon is that you can almost see the thought cross the face of our many Clooneys: "Those poor people in Haiti.  I'll give them the most valuable thing I can think of--my time and attention."  The self-satisfaction involved is so high that you begin to wonder if people aren't secretly rooting for natural disasters to give them an opportunity to make a big public splash about their own thoughtfulness.  Ugh.  I thought that charity and generosity were supposed to be the one time you didn't think of yourself first.


(On an unrelated note: there's a new Daily Fluff today.)