Andy Borgmann's Blog

As I sit on my computer right now, I am staring at my AOL Buddy List and an ad for ONE.ORG begins to play. Basically what we have here is a bunch of celebrities snapping their fingers in order to show us how simple it can be to end poverty if we all just speak up!

Now this brings me back to the glorious summer of '05 and the Live 8 concert. Do you remember? For a week it seemed like we had every celebrity in the world, telling the 8 leaders from the 8 "great countries" that the world wants them to end poverty.

Before I get into what I feel about this, I should add the disclaimer that I am sure there are some truly amazing celebrities deeply concerned with the poverty issue. One case in point is Angelina Jolie. She has moved her family. Adopted her kids. And given tons of money and time in order to fight poverty all around the world, and for that I congratulate her. There are probably others (Bono, George Clooney maybe?).

However, here's my problem with this. If anybody in this world has the ability to do something about poverty it is celebrities. They have the money, and more importantly, the time to really do something about this issue if they wanted to. But instead, they settle for a concert once every 20 years (Live Aid = 1985, Live 8 = 2005), and very little in their own life changes. They are still pulling in millions of dollars and wasting it on their own greed and selfishness. Then they have the audacity to produce commercial telling us not even to help ourselves, but rather, just sign a petition so that others (i.e. governments) will step it up and help the situations in Africa. This is ridiculous.

I have spent my life trying to make the lives of others better. There are families in Mexico that have houses in part due to my effort. There is an orphanage in Honduras that has a gym do to work I have done. There are gardens in South Africa I have helped get started. Now I am not saying all this because I am prideful and want the glory. Far from it. What I want is for America and Celebrities in particular to recognize that poverty is not going to end just by snapping our fingers and signing a petition. Nor will it even end by wealthy countries canceling the debt of poorer countries (does that work on a personal level - does a poor person become rich because a bank cancel their mortgage?) Poverty will end when rich countries' citizens make sacrifices to share the wealth, and aid in the empowering of poor countries' citizens to empower themselves. Until we as a culture put away the idea that Hollywood sells us everyday that materialism brings us happiness, we will never make any grounds in helping impoverished countries. So celebrities out there, I will see you in about 20 years when you decide to throw another concert telling the world that you care, yet ignoring the fact that for the past 20 years you & poverty are at polar extremes of each other.