16 July 2008

Celebrity

I was driving my usual route on the way into work the other day when I heard the egregious thing on the radio. Mind you, this wasn't the usual station that I tune into every morning and afternoon, it was one that someone else had listened to when they were driving. In any case, they said that, much to my relief, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twin children had been delivered without any complications. Whew! At least, I can sleep soundly once again because the new Pitt-Jolie son and daughter are alive and well. No, that wasn't what got me thinking about this blog post. Instead, the talking personality said that some newspaper had paid something like $11 million dollars for the first picture of the "new" family - becuase they weren't a family with their previous four children or anything.

Let's think about this...$11,000,000.00 (somehow I think it has more of an impact with all the zeros) for a picture. Unfortunately I don't know the numbers off hand, but I can only imagine how many better uses there are for $11 million. How about feeding hungry people? How about helping bail out our less than responsible fellow citizens who were "unaware" they were setting themselves up for disaster when they took out a home loan for $500,000+ while earning a comfortable $65,000 per year? How about donating it to a charity to help overseas people recover from tragedy. How about helping to build a new community center for kids to go instead of joining a gang and perpetuating the cycles of violence that kill countless people every year? As I said, there are many, many things that we can do with $11 million, but what do we choose to do with it? We bought a picture of two adults and their children.

My point isn't that someone spent $11 million on a picture. It's the principle - we give entirely too much of our time concerning ourselves with what people - celebrities or not they are just people - do with their lives. Photographers jump when a movie star or singer takes time to go to the beach with his/her family. I'm sure they do the same thing when Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy take their families to the beach, right? No? Hm...what about when Mr. Ban Ki-moon and his family go on vacation? Ok ok ok, let's be serious...the media won't do a thing when the aforementioned people take time for themselves, but when Dmitri Medvedev steps off his jet on a short family vacation, photographers go nuts, right?

Of course they don't. For some reason, we place the spotlight on people who, in the grand scheme of things, make little to no appreciable difference in our lives. On the flip side, we never talk about the things done by people who can make a difference in our lives. For a glimpse of these people take a look at the last paragraph (for those of you who don't keep up with international affiars, those are the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Chancellor of Germany, President of France, Secretary General of the United Nations, and President of Russia, respectively). Not sure who they are? These are some of the people who actually have a say in world events, the people who can work to change the lives of most of the world's population, and yet most people aren't likely to recognize their names...interesting.

I might be off, but I don't think any of the above people would have spent $11 million on a picture of some family presently living in France.

Ok, so what's the point? Why am I rambling on? My point is that we should place more importance and focus on the people who can actually make a difference in the lives of others as well as ourselves. We shouldn't worry so much about a new family or fashion trend or rehab success story. Take the lead from politicians and world leaders whose main occupational goal is to leave their world a better place than it was when they found it. Maybe, just maybe then we'll be able to do the same.

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