I AM AWFUL PERSON

I think at times I am a horrible person, and, I mean horrible. 

Just recently Hurricane Harvey barreled through a number of Texas coastal cities, including Houston, causing devastation amounting to billions of dollars of damage and years of clean-up and reconstruction.  Twenty-one people have already died.

The first response that a normal person ought to have is empathy and sympathy for those who are suffering.  I have a brother-in-law who lives in Houston who is right now in limbo about whether or not he even has a home to come back to.  My wife and I have reached out to him and extended our offerings of help, to clean-up his house, to watch his beloved pet cat, to have him stay with us while the way home is blocked.  I have sympathy for him, and it hurts to for me to see him hurt so much.  I can sense the helplessness in his voice when I talk to him over the phone.

There is also a certain amount of appreciation of the blessing that Hurricane Harvey did not change direction and hit my part of Texas.  I have sat in my house the last couple of days and imagined water two feet deep on the floor, all of my furniture and personal items stored on the floor soaking.  It tears at my stomach.

But, somehow, that all of that empathy and sympathy dissipates when I turn on the television. 

My wife is news junky and watches it almost 24 hours a day.  Of course, news of the hurricane is dominate, a footage of reporters in rain coats, umbrellas, and tall waterproof boots are repeated ad nauseam.  I am ashamed to admit that I am not interested in watching the suffering of the victims of the hurricane, those trying to escape cars or being carried away in transports or wading through high water.

Even worse, I grow enraged when I see celebrities on television touting there giving to a relief effort to help the victims.  This morning, Good Morning America on ABC had a telethon whereat celebrities were answering phones to accept donations to help the victims.  I had to turn it off, so incensed did it make me.

I think a part of me feels that charity goes hand and hand with humility.  I recall when Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra died, the focus of the report was that how the World lost great performers.  But always hidden in those stories were little gems of how Hope and Sinatra were very charitable and donating millions of dollars to charity.  But this was not the focus of their life.  It was done secretively.  As Jesus once asked us to do, they gave with their right hand without letting their left hand know what they were doing.

Humility seems to be the last thing on the mind of current celebrities who feel that by virtue of their celebrity that they have a responsibility to become a spokesperson for causes.  Rather, celebrities need the coverage as for public relations goodwill.  The nightmare then is that the cause gets buried beneath the weight the celebrity attached to it.  Think of how Madonna’s and Angelina Jolie’s adoption of children in need has turned the issue of adoption into a three ring circus.

Recently, I came up a set of photos in which Kim Kardashian was dressed and portrayed as Jackie Kennedy Onassis.  It too made me physically sick that this woman who became famous because of a sex tape and for silly, inane antics on television could equate herself with a woman of such dignity and grace as Mrs. Kennedy Onassis.  And she would not be the first. 

And what does this all matter if the celebrities are doing good.  If promotes giving, then isn’t it a good thing and should be celebrated. 

As I said, I am awful person.