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I Donated $1000 to American Idol. But You, You’re Trash.

See Peter Singer's response to this post, here! I donated $1000 to “Idol Gives Back” the other night. Check it out, here’s the charge on my Mastercard. Trans Date: 04/28/2007 Post Date: 04/30/2007 Description: IDOL GIVES BACK(Other) Transaction Number: 25536067120000001175409 … Read More

By / May 3, 2007
Jewcy loves trees! Please don't print!

See Peter Singer's response to this post, here!

I donated $1000 to “Idol Gives Back” the other night. Check it out, here’s the charge on my Mastercard.

Trans Date: 04/28/2007 Post Date: 04/30/2007 Description: IDOL GIVES BACK(Other) Transaction Number: 25536067120000001175409 Amount: $1,000.00

I don't want to say this makes me a better, classier person than you, but…well, who are we kidding? A thousand dollars is a buttload of money! And remind me again how much you gave?

When I first learned that the One campaign and American Idol were opening an ambitious new front in the war against extreme poverty, I thought I'd give $250. Then I considered that half the money goes to the most impoverished children in this country (in Appalachia and downtown Los Angeles, where children are undernourished and have little access to education), and the other half to the most impoverished on the planet (in sub-Saharan Africa, where the mortality rate for children under five exceeds 33% in some countries). So I decided to give $500. And still I felt unsatisfied.

How did I became so charitable, so deeply decent? I don't have an answer for you. Was it my quality upbringing? The well-developed social consciousness that came with my fine education? Or have I just been blessed with a natural empathy, that instinctive sensitivity to suffering that seems so essential a part of my nature? I suspect it's a combination of all these things and more. Regardless, I donated $1000. More than all of you combined, I'm sure.

Do you find all this self-satisfaction nauseating? Of course you do. I don't like it either. We encounter arrogance and self-promotion all the time, but it's jarring to hear someone even discuss the dollar value of their charitable contributions, much less boast about it. How could it be otherwise, when we've been indoctrinated with all that insufferable Judeo-Christian twaddle about good deeds being noblest when done quietly, without public display or recognition? It's Jesus's favorite talking point. The Pharisees couldn't walk an old lady across the Cardo without sending the Lamb of God off on another tiresome rant about the hypocrisy of good deeds done for public display.

And it wasn't just Jesus. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides broke charity down into eight forms, and the more selfless your intentions, the more noble the charity.

It's all a bunch of destructive hippy-dippy bullshit. The real hero is the person who gives, and then struts and preens in public like they just fucked the prom queen.

Because yep, verily, the highest form of charity is that which is given in the spirit of smug one-upmanship. The future of the planet will be vastly better if only we can learn to properly exploit the insatiable status hunger of people like us.

In Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen marveled at the middle-class's indefatigable clamoring for signifiers of class and status. So intense was the desire to improve in social standing relative to one's peers that Veblen thought it almost spiritual in nature. No bauble was too useless, no gizmo too costly, if it helped accomplish this. He called this "conspicuous consumption."

And that spiritual drive for status, Jewcers, is the way and the path. Unlike Jesus or Maimonides (or Marx), we live at at time when vast quantities of disposable capital have accrued among middle-class social climbers. So if we wish to end the most grievous injustices on the planet–say, the annual death of six million children from severe malnutrition and associated opportunistic infections–we have three options: We can pray for human nature to change such that self-sacrifice is more natural than self-seeking; we can fantasize about a revolutionary reordering of the global economy; or we can harness our status anxiety in the service of humanitarianism.

When charitable giving becomes a form of conspicuous consumption, when saving the life of a child confers half the social status of, say, a cute pair of shoes, human history will be forever transformed. Another world is possible, and middle-class status anxiety can get us there.

So forget Maimonides' antiquated "levels of charity." Ignore Jesus's tired rants against hypocrisy. We need more Pharisees, and fewer saints. Whether we like it or not, the most effective charity is that which is accompanied by a sneer at the lowly neighbours. Everything else is tied for last.

See Peter Singer's response to this post, here!

[The author futzed around a bit with this post since it was first published, including to make the satire of the opening section more explicit.]

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  • Joey Kurtzman

    Oh for God's sake, I'm bored of being told I'm a scumbag asshole! I know it! But I'm a scumbag asshole who was making the most important moral point to be found anywhere on the vast internetz. Is Tom Williams the only one who got it? Next hater, I insist that you read through the second half of the post before drinking on that haterade.

  • JewcyCraig

    Well, she got part of it right. And if you're a moral reprobate, what is Candy, who seems to have donated nothing? She's right, though. You're a terrible person for being proud of your donation.

  • Candy

    Your arrogance and selfishness is pathetic. I can’t help but belittle someone who puts down others who do anything they can to help. Wow….you can charge $1,000 on a Master card and pay interest on it for who knows how long, judging by how special you feel you’ve donated a meager $1,000. People donate their LIVES every day to help others LIVES. And what are you doing? You tell me? From the sounds of it you aren’t benefited enough by just HELPING people. You need to brag profusely about a single contribution which shows your intentions were certainly not genuine but, selfish reasons. Do you need publicity? That’s what it sounds like to me! Big author aren’t we? I think you need to grow up, a lot. I’m 18 years old and have better morals than you. This blog you’ve posted is a joke. I’ve been through a lot in my life and money is not all that can save a person’s life. When you are poverty stricken you need moral support to survive the day. Maybe if you met a poor, sick, hungry child you would realize, yes he/she needs to eat but she needs love just as much. They ARE still human.

  • Anonymous

    ..and to think my wife and I only contributed $4,500. Perhaps we should have stood on the rooftops and shouted it to the world as you’re doing.

    My grandmother always warned me to be cautious of those who only do their good deeds for others to see.

  • Anonymous

    throwing money at problems and never experiencing them first hand doesn’t solve anything. I’m glad your so lucky to throw around a thousand dollars. Your money probably wont even make it to the mouths of the hungry. Get over yourself. American Idol sucks.

  • Anonymous

    There’s only one problem with your argument about turning Maimonides’ levels upside down; he put them that way for a reason. The person receiving the charity is more likely to accept it if it comes without a big public spectacle. The spectacle might be good for your status, but making it public only empahsizes the divide between you and the poor soul who has to endure your preening.

  • Tom Williams

    I found this post through StumbleUpon.  I really appreciate your style on this issue.  I take your post to be classic Contrarian (correct me if I'm wrong).

    Idol Gives Back has contributed more hand-wringing within the philanthropy blogosphere on the increasingly relevant question of the trend towards a consumer ethos of charity, which based on your historical definition of charity might very well be an oxy-moron.

    What I like about your post is whether the beneficiaries care about the intention or source of the assistance they receive.  You have scratched the surface of one of the most philosophically interesting questions about charity and philanthropy.

  • Anonymous

    Well put, Joey.

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t it equally bad when one assumes that they’re NOT preaching just because you haven’t heard a horror story yet? By the way, I’d be a lot more impressed with “faith based” stuff if I could find even one non-conservative xian group that got dime one.

  • Joey Kurtzman

    I'm totally with Monica. In fact, that's probably what most accounts for my occasional Christophilia outbursts: In the two causes in which I've had long-term  involvement–homeless services, and food security for children under five in sub-Saharan Africa–I've encountered so many fantastic, inspiring, compassionate people whose work is informed by their Christianity. Yes, there are some Bible-bangers out there who try to leverage assistance in order to secure converts, but in my experience they're in the minority. The ones I've worked with–and I'm talking about some real believers, a Catholic nun, two different Jesuits, several Evangelicals, etc.–have generally waited to be approached about religion before discussing it with people who were receiving, and even then were low-key in their deliver. They wanted it to be very clear that there were no religious strings attached to the assistance they were providing.

    And most importantly, they were doing it. If you care about the actual goals of this sort of work, then that matters infinitely more than the conceptual framework that got them there.

  • Monica Osborne

    I'm not referring to those who force others to listen to their religious crap before they get fed or helped or whatever. I'm talking about groups that are affiliated with a religion who do plain old charity work — the same kind anyone else would do. My problem is with people who criticize the efforts of these people simply because they assume it is a religious impulse driving their altruistic efforts. I have actually spent a lot of my own time over the years with various religious groups doing just that, and I have never been involved in anything that required a person to listen to a sermon before receiving the aid that they need.