I was Are We All, In Truth, Celebrities in Our Own Right?......
watching the Hope for Haiti Now special on TV Friday night. It was a Live-Aid, Farm-Aid type show to raise money for Haitian earthquake relief. It was on all the major TV stations, streamed live on the computer and on some radio stations. It was an amazing feat of organization and cooperation with all the normally competitive broadcast stations working together to bring it about.
In between the world famous singers like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Stevie Wonder and numerous others, the camera would focus on famous, mostly Hollywood, celebrities either individually asking us to donate, or sitting behind a huge bank of telephones as a group. I found that I could name about 95% of the people as the camera panned on the actors and singers acting as telephone operators. I also knew all the live singers and commentators even though the show never once named them.
Between songs and pleas for aid, we were shown shots of the devastation of Haiti, the sick and wounded, remarkable rescues and numerous unknowns helping where they can. What really struck me was that I could name all those people behind the phones or in front of the microphones, but I could not name one of those people pulling out survivors from the buildings, carrying supplies, or operating on the injured in circumstances worse than any battlefield.
At first that bothered me. Why should I know all those famous celebrities and not the other people doing good in Haiti? How about all those people who do good around the world, when it is not a crisis? So that got me wondering about all the people in this world who are unknown celebrities in their own right.
We do not know them and probably never will. They are the doctors who left cushy private practices to donate a month of their time working in conditions where something as simple as water is a luxury. They are the search and rescue teams, putting their lives on the line by crawling into and under precarious blocks of cement to rescue someone they will never know. It is the mother who spends 50 hours digging with her own hands to reach her 2 year old child buried under the rubble. For Haiti, it is all the people who were already working there who either gave their lives in the earthquake, or who survived and stayed to help.
You could also say that the amazing vitality of the Haitian residents make them celebrities in their own right. I am not sure that I could have lived through that earthquake where most likely everyone lost somebody in the rubble, lived out in the open without food and water for days, had untreated injures, and still be singing and smiling. Sure there are some people complaining, but when you watch the pictures, there does not seem to be much unrest despite the incredible conditions. That speaks to an underlying fortitude that certainly would raise them, as an entire nation, to celebrity status.
I came to the conclusion, whether digging with your bare hands to rescue a child, or being dressed in your finest, singing in front of a microphone, or just contributing a dollar to a cause, we all have our ways of contributing to the betterment of humankind. And that makes us all celebrities. Maybe not recognizable on TV, but celebrities none the less.
watching the Hope for Haiti Now special on TV Friday night. It was a Live-Aid, Farm-Aid type show to raise money for Haitian earthquake relief. It was on all the major TV stations, streamed live on the computer and on some radio stations. It was an amazing feat of organization and cooperation with all the normally competitive broadcast stations working together to bring it about.
In between the world famous singers like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Stevie Wonder and numerous others, the camera would focus on famous, mostly Hollywood, celebrities either individually asking us to donate, or sitting behind a huge bank of telephones as a group. I found that I could name about 95% of the people as the camera panned on the actors and singers acting as telephone operators. I also knew all the live singers and commentators even though the show never once named them.
Between songs and pleas for aid, we were shown shots of the devastation of Haiti, the sick and wounded, remarkable rescues and numerous unknowns helping where they can. What really struck me was that I could name all those people behind the phones or in front of the microphones, but I could not name one of those people pulling out survivors from the buildings, carrying supplies, or operating on the injured in circumstances worse than any battlefield.
At first that bothered me. Why should I know all those famous celebrities and not the other people doing good in Haiti? How about all those people who do good around the world, when it is not a crisis? So that got me wondering about all the people in this world who are unknown celebrities in their own right.
We do not know them and probably never will. They are the doctors who left cushy private practices to donate a month of their time working in conditions where something as simple as water is a luxury. They are the search and rescue teams, putting their lives on the line by crawling into and under precarious blocks of cement to rescue someone they will never know. It is the mother who spends 50 hours digging with her own hands to reach her 2 year old child buried under the rubble. For Haiti, it is all the people who were already working there who either gave their lives in the earthquake, or who survived and stayed to help.
You could also say that the amazing vitality of the Haitian residents make them celebrities in their own right. I am not sure that I could have lived through that earthquake where most likely everyone lost somebody in the rubble, lived out in the open without food and water for days, had untreated injures, and still be singing and smiling. Sure there are some people complaining, but when you watch the pictures, there does not seem to be much unrest despite the incredible conditions. That speaks to an underlying fortitude that certainly would raise them, as an entire nation, to celebrity status.
I came to the conclusion, whether digging with your bare hands to rescue a child, or being dressed in your finest, singing in front of a microphone, or just contributing a dollar to a cause, we all have our ways of contributing to the betterment of humankind. And that makes us all celebrities. Maybe not recognizable on TV, but celebrities none the less.
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