Plucky Paupers
I am so sick of wealthy people being hailed as heroes because they give money to charity. Look - the only real charity is anonymous. Not only that, but if you get a tax receipt to boot - it's not even really charity. It's just financial savvy.
And since it doesn't hurt people with lots of money to give up a bit of it, even if it is anonymous and even if a tax receipt wasn't issued - I don't think it's charity. Not really. It's something, I guess... Being a sentient humanoid, maybe?
Here in Ottawa, the former publisher of the Ottawa Citizen would annually be heralded in his own newspaper for running (administering, lending his name to, something like that) the Snowsuit Fund. Now, aside from the Dickensian picture a country like Canada even having a Snowsuit Fund conjures up for social agitators like moi - I have to say, snowsuits, good quality snowsuits in good repair, are a dime a dozen at Sally Anns and St. Vincent de Pauls all across this cold, Presbyterian country. There really is no need for a Snowsuit Fund. I outfitted three children for years in almost new snowsuits (in some cases - never worn) because snowsuits are nowadays both cheap and well-made. People give them away rather than throw them out because a kid can barely make a dent in a snowsuit before he's outgrown it and it's time to pass it along.
So it's a pretty... anachronistic endeavour these days to have a Snowsuit Fund at all, let alone laud publicly the guy who perpetuates such a bizarre carry-over from... his own childhood? I doubt it. He looks like he was born with a silver dollar in his navel.
The Christmas turkey drive is another annual charity drive that DRIVES me nuts. What is the point of giving poor people turkeys when it is quite likely these days that they don't have the pot to roast it in? Or even know how to cook a turkey? I've never cooked one - and I took home economics in high school. My mother, an old-fashioned Liberal, once said to her friends who are every year so burdened with goodwill that it's almost all they talk about for several weeks leading up to the big giveaway, "Why not just give people money to buy what they want to eat for Christmas Dinner?" The predictable answer, "Oh dear. Because they'd just spend it on beer and cigarettes." To which my mother replied (this is why I love her), "So what? It's Christmas."
Anyway, I feel the same way about celebrities donating money to hurricane victims, Oprah giving away millions, well-heeled retired politicians travelling the globe on our dime to raise AIDS awareness, rock stars holding concerts to raise money for famine. You name it. If you are so obscenely wealthy that you can advertise your own charity to millions of people worldwide, then you are wealthy enough to buy an African country and make it over in your own image.
I know. Very uncharitable of me. Indeed.
