Not Another Disaster Relief Event!

NBC's many channels - the NBC broadcast network, CNBC, Bravo, Telemundo, Washabubu 1 - are airing a telethon tomorrow for victims of last month's tsunami. I've seen partial lists of the celebrities scheduled, with different names, although Madonna appears on all of them! >:-(

Several other tsunami relief concerts are scheduled in the United States and Great Britain, and quite frankly, it's making me sick. Twenty years after Live Aid proved that raising money for a cause by entertaining people is a complete waste of time because it is so damned noncommittal, celebrities are at it again to show how much they care by donating their literally valuable time to perform or appear on TV and urge people to help others by giving money. For what? For resettling the tsunami victims? For helping them get back to the merely miserable lives they endured before the tidal waves hit? Maybe to buy food that will solve the victims' problems temporarily, assuming it gets to Sri Lanka or Indonesia? Look, unless Julia Roberts sets an example and goes to southern Asia herself to get her hands dirty and work to help rebuild lives and communities out there, I'm not going to be impressed by anything these celebs do to "help" Third World inhabitants.

Although he's since disappeared into a black hole, Phil Collins cast a lasting shadow on benefit concerts - and inadvertently exposed them for what they are - by performing sets at both Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia to grab extra attention for himself. He practiced two songs on the piano and played both of them in London, then again that day in Philadelphia - which would have been fine if his London performance hadn't been shown at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium on the jumbo video monitor! Collins's stunt not only showed that the music didn't matter (well, it was the eighties!), it also underscored how a benefit concert can be a cynical exercise to show how pop stars care.

Yeah, right. A few benefit concerts are earnest, selfless efforts at doing something for a good cause (George Harrison's Bangladesh concerts, every benefit concert Harry Chapin ever played), but most of them are vanity exercises to show how concerned celebrities are with the problems of us mortals. And how concerned were the people involved with African famine relief in 1985? The Live Aid concerts were held that July; the whole exercise was practically forgotten by August.

As authors Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell once wrote, pop stars and other celebrities are more likely to be committed to a cause if the cause is more controversial. Do you know anyone in favor of hunger or homelessness? (Note to Newt Gignrich's ex-wives - you can sit down, now, thank you.)

Say what you will about Jerry Lewis's muscular dystrophy telethons, at least Jerry comes back for more every Labor Day.