Really Celebs, Really?!??!! Warning: this is mostly complaints

So I was driving to work yesterday and listening to the Billy Madison show on the Edge. It was a typical morning and nothing too exciting was happening.

However, they mentioned that a bunch of celebs got together with Simon Cowell and created a re-mix of Everybody Hurts by REM. Now, my first thought is "really, why would you remake such a great song?" And my second thought was "are you freaking kidding me? When was the last time you guys hurt?"

Apparently they recorded the song for charity to send money to Haiti. That kind of made it an even bigger slap in the face to me. I mean, you're going to sing about hurting from your million dollar studio while people have literally lost everything, including their families, and think that somehow you can relate?

Needless to say, it pissed me off. It pissed me off for more than one reason. 1) let's not pretend like these celebrities have any idea what the people of Haiti are going through. 2) instead of gathering for a song, why don't you fly your butts down to Haiti and give help where it's really needed? In HAITI. 3) why don't they ever do this kind of thing to raise money for the people of the United States? I'm not about to spit statistics because I honestly don't know any off the top of my head, but why aren't we raising money for our homeless shelters or for battered and abused women and men? Why is it that celebs are so quick to jump on the third-world country band wagon but aren't as quick to help in their own neighborhoods?

I think that before we consider purchasing these songs for "charity" we should take a look at what else the celebs have committed to doing. I mean, was it really all that of an inconvenience to get them together? Probably not. They probably live within a 10 mile radius of each other. But would it put them out to travel to Haiti? Of course it would. And that's probably why they haven't done it yet.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. I certainly haven't booked my flight to Haiti, but at the same time, I don't exactly lead the life of leisure that they lead. I can't spend $100,000 to get a private jet to take me there and back and I certainly can't afford to take 2 weeks off from work to give my time. But I can help. And I have. I probably won't buy this song to help, but there are a dozen other organizations who haven't produced songs with a dozen big time celebs that could use your money just as much as iTunes. Can you imagine if everyone just gave $1 to American Red Cross or Unicef? What a difference that would make, huh?

"To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own"
Anne Morrow Lindbergh