American Idol Gives Back rant - I oopsed!

Edit: Ok, I was wrong. American Idol IS giving back to America too. See, my problem is I've been bombarded with this stuff for all my life and now when it comes on the tv I tune it out. I'm tired of the film clips showing you how horrible it is, making you feel bad, pulling your heart out and stomping on it until you decide to give some money. So when AI was talking about all this, I tuned it out because I didn't want to hear it again. And I wrongly assumed they weren't giving money to America. I apologize to AI for that. We all know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ASS out of U and ME - and I certainly did that to myself.

I guess part of the problem is you rarely ever year about money being given back to our own country, you only hear about it when it's helping people in other countries, especially ones where living conditions are so bad. It's like watching the news - you rarely ever hear good stuff, it's all sensational things. You hear all the bad happing in Iraq, our soldiers dieing, but you never hear all the amazingly great stories of Iraq people who are thankful to our soldiers. It's just not newsworthy, and I think the same about when people give money locally. If I were to give 10 million dollars to some 3rd world country it would be all over the news. But if I gave it to some group here that helps people who are living just as badly, you'd never hear about it.

Anyhow, AI is doing the right thing. I love the show and am glad my brother pointed out to me that I need to check my facts first, I feel better now. :)


This post is likely to make me unpopular.

American Idol is "Giving Back" in the form of raising money for kids in 3rd world countries, places where living conditions aren't exactly nice (to put it mildly) and they don't have much in the way of food or supplies (medical and otherwise). While I applaud them for wanting to help people/kids in need, I have to ask this question:

What about the people here in our own country that need help? Why help these others instead of our own people?

This is something that has bugged me for a long time. You see groups like American Idol, celebrities, and others wanting to help people in these impoverished countries more than wanting to help people in their own backyard. I'm not saying the people in these other countries aren't in need of help. What I am saying is we have plenty of problems right here at home, plenty of people who need help. There are still many from Katrina who need help. A tornado went through a town in Texas that wiped out a school. There are lots of kids living on the streets, people who are living in horrible conditions, babies who are born with little chance to survive because the mother can't afford to go to a hospital. Why can't we help these people too?

American Idol raised over 30 million dollars. That's incredibly cool. If they want to help these other countries, fine, take half of it and give to those countries, and half to needy people here in America. How would it feel to you if you were living on the street, in some area where there is so much crime you worry about your life when stepping outside, couldn't afford medical help, etc, and heard all this money was raise to help people in another country? Aren't we supposed to help our own?

And what's what adopting kids from these countries? There are plenty of kids right here in our own country that could use adopting. When I see some celebrity adopting someone from another country I'm happy for that kid because they'll hopefully have a future they couldn't otherwise have - and maybe they wouldn't have lived past five. But it also seems like they are doing this only because it makes them look good, not because they really honestly care about the kids. Now I don't for a minute think they are going to mistreat these kids. I'm just saying there are plenty of kids right here in America who could benefit from being adopted just as well as these other kids.

And you know those films they love to show about how horrible things are in these countries? I'm not saying they are making these up, rather I'm positive you could easily make a film showing similar horrors of people living here in America.

Again, I think it's great that people want to help these other countries that have horrible living conditions. I just think it would be nice if they would care a little more about people in their own backyard.