Hollywood Helps Victims of Natural Disasters, Ignores Victims Of War and Genocide

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The celebrity-addled Haiti telethon is set to air this evening, with performances expected from moral arbiters like Coldplay, Madonna, and Justin Timberlake. It’s a worthy cause, and I wish it well.

Yet, this telethon, and many before it, reveal a certain moral blind spot that afflicts celebrities and their charity events. For while Hollywood celebrities are often visible raising funds and all-important “awareness” (after all, in the words of our President, “bearing witness” is just enough) in the wake of natural disasters, the victims of man-made disasters are all too often forgotten.

With the exception of (the truly exceptional) 9/11 attacks, almost all star-studded fundraisers are devoted to aiding victims of nature’s fury. The last telethon of Haiti-style magnitude occurred in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami of late 2004. The great Jerry Lewis famously puts on an annual telethon to benefit those suffering from Muscular Dystrophy. And perhaps the first major celebrity fundraising event was the 1971 response to cyclones in Bangladesh put on by George Harrison.

(In fairness, this trend is not confined to the rich and famous: cities across the country often stage walks and runs to combat a number of natural ills, such as breast cancer, AIDS, and leukemia.)

People who are victims of other people, however, go all but ignored in the celebrity imagination.

In the last fifteen years, 3 to 4 million North Koreans have starved to death as a result of deliberate policies put in place by the Kim Jong Il regime. Horrifically, this continues today. Meanwhile, those North Koreans lucky enough to escape into China desperately need money for resettlement in South Korea, the US, or elsewhere. Where is their telethon?

Experts estimate that some 300,000 have died in Darfur as a result of tribal wars and genocide. Survivors in refugee camps are deprived of basic needs, such as food, water, and medicine. Where is their telethon?

Many thousands more have died in Afghanistan as a result of the coalition’s war on that impoverished country. Regardless of one’s opinion on the justness of that war – and the President’s surge – it is undeniable that a humanitarian crisis of grave proportions is afoot. Where is the telethon?

It’s not altogether difficult to deduce why staging fundraisers for victims of nature is attractive to celebrities. After all, helping victims of natural disasters requires no moral stance: who could be “in favor” of a tsunami or an earthquake? What’s more, aiding victims of climate or geology does not require one to confront evil – or even call “evil” by its proper name.

Let’s call this trend by its proper name, though: inconsistent at best, cowardly and morally bankrupt at its worse.