26 Dec 16
Pious Profanity!
Particularly with CNN and Fox News, I grow weary of endlessly watching “poverty pornography,” pumped over the wire by dubious organizations, sanctimoniously representing themselves as “charities.”
We are treated to interminable disturbing/offensive photos of starving people (including weeping children) shivering animals, all with ever-anguished faces, amid pleading solicitations for money. We never get to know whom these children are, nor where/when photos were taken.
I remember when philanthropist, and one-time presidential candidate, Ross Perot, bitterly lamented that his biggest problem when deciding which professing “charities” he should endow, was finding any of them, even one, who spend money intelligently!
Extracting money from guilt-ridden Americans is big business, and the extraction process has become a goal in itself!
Perot discovered that executives administering many of these ostensible “charities” paid themselves obscene salaries, spent most of their time traveling to “conventions” (always first-class), staying in five-star hotels, and occasional making slobbering speeches about “the poor.”
He concluded, correctly, that most, particularly the biggest, were rackets, doing little more than providing cushy life-styles for their promoters and executives, and cynical solicitation speeches delivered by those same executives are correctly described as “pious profanity!”
One trait shared by all such dubious “charities” is “poverty pornography.” Their TV ads, as described above, are all the same. They imply that your contribution will somehow keep these starving children from starving, will keep these shivering animals from shivering. Curious that every year, especially during the Holiday Season, their TV ads show photos of the same starving children they depicted last year, and the year before! Apparently, these children haven’t aged, and they’re obviously still starving, despite all the money collected!
In this country, it is easy for anyone, any organization, to represent itself as a “charity,” put their poverty porn on TV, and then watch the money roll in!
Such ads upset/disturb many, and insult the intelligence of the rest of us!
Legitimate charities are out there, but they seldom advertise on TV!
“No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt”
WE Channing
/John
