It's friday night here in Dublin and I'm watching Idol Gives Back , the special editition of American Idol which is highlighting povery in Africa and the USA and raising money through the people who phone in to vote. I have mixed feelings about these kinds of fundrasing. The cause of course is praisworthy but I never quite know how I should respond to them. Are these charity shows , and the big Live Aid concerts that we are all familiar with , are they a good thing? Do they actually help or are they part of the cause?
The easy part is just getting out your credit card , but what if to do that is in fact doing more harm than good. And many people belive that these events are positively harmfull and do nothing for those who are truely in need.
I personally do not feel at all comfortable about these kind of events. They have become something of a spectator sport. An entertainment in themselves. And of course the real solution to poverty is to bring about political change.
There is something very wrong when we in the west turn these things into a telivision show and allow ourselves to be entertained. It's a bit like how we have gotten into the habit of watching the latest war on CNN while we sit there with a cup of coffee in one hand and a biscuit in the other.
There are many 'news' programmes on tv now which purport to have a serious intent , to show us , let us say , how less fortunate people get by or don't get by but as you watch them it becomes obious that they are purely a bit of voyeurism. Indeed some of these programmes are little less than obscene. They resemble programmes about animals in the zoo except of course they are about people.
But as the man said, "That's Entertainment".