Each week, millions of Americans kick back and watch as Ty Pennington and his crew of craftsman on Extreme Home Makeover build a dream home for a well-deserving, needy family. Families suffering from the effects of poverty, cancer, handicap, or lost loved ones, are sent on a dream vacation and watch on TV from their five-star hotel rooms at Disney World as their too small, too old, too run-down homes are demolished to make way for their new McMansion. A padded playroom for the boy with brittle bones, an interactive entertainment room for the deaf/blind/autistic family, a home office for the single father of eight who recently lost his wife to cancer-the E.H.M. team gives a week of their time to improve the homes and lives of the needy. Each episode highlights the hours of time and hard labor donated by local townspeople who want to offer support to a neighbor in need.
Just after Christmas, millions of Americans watched again as homes were demolished-this time by tsunami. Those fortunate enough (or not) to be alive are sick, injured, and grieving. For every well-deserving homeless survivor, there are thousands of needy neighbors too busy with their own grieving and rebuilding to offer their help. The set-up appears flawless: tragedy, worthy family, new mansion.
It seems the stuff reality TV producer’s dreams are made of-the E.H.M. crew heads to Phuket to build a mansion for everyone affected by the disaster. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, but most importantly we’ll tune in and double the ratings of either the news or E.H.M. But at a pace of one home per week, Ty alone obviously cannot rebuild the region in his lifetime.
Luckily, he isn’t the only one who can’t say no to a neighbor in need. Those left cringing as images of the Tsunami filled cable news were compelled to open their wallets to donate in record numbers to organizations like the Red Cross and U.N.I.C.E.F. When the media spotlight finds the latest good cause, we give our alms where we are told. What is it about these images that inspire us to give, and to give money? Why do we offer money, of all things, and why does it make us feel that we have done enough?
We see gruesome images on cable news everyday of Iraq, Sudan, and AIDS in Africa. By now, our culture is supposed to be saturated with images of violence and suffering, from both Hollywood and the media, which we are supposed to be detached from or somehow immune to. $350 million is an awful lot of money to come from people who aren’t capable of feeling sympathy for the cause. But what does $350 million buy in a region reduced to rubble, without even a Home Depot to purchase the standard SubZero fridge or a BestBuy for the requisite 40” plasma screen?
We are told money can buy anything but love, though really it can buy anything but time. We give money to victims because that’s all we have to spare. Our lives are micromanaged down to the last second-graduation, college, graduate school, jobs, marriage, children, mortgages. We don’t allow a space to pencil in volunteering months or years of time in the Peace Corps or for Red Cross to rebuild homes for the needy. Even Ty relies on a lucrative salary and endorsement deal with Sears.
Because prior to disaster, we couldn’t offer our time to victims of poverty in South East Asia, now that the worst has happened, all we have left to ensure a good nights’ rest is to toss them money. We think Habitat for Humanity will do all the heavy lifting. Their website gives an image of a dilapidated shack and tattered piece of fabric hanging over two small children with a caption that reads “Help us rid the world of poverty housing like this!” We don’t bother to read the fine print on the website saying that because “as many as five million people are displaced and in need of basic services as a result of the tsunami-earthquake catastrophe,” and as a result Habitat is only equipped to provide “first shelter,” or basic transitional housing that could later be improved upon. How basic? Will they be so basic that once the money stops pouring into the region the “shelters” will look a lot like the poverty housing depicted on the website? But who reads the fine print? Especially when it is next to the boldface type that tells you a $50 donation buys a low-flow toilet. A natural disaster is no time to stop caring about the environment.
Perhaps we really are immune to images of real tragedy if we can’t see hypocrisy in building an Olympic-sized swimming pool and state-of-the-art home gym for the handicapped family in Springfield, and assembling sloppy substandard housing for the tsunami victims. Maybe the distance makes us comfortable enough to throw a few dollars to the Red Cross to let them deal with rebuilding while we spend the rest putting an addition on our own versions of the suburban palace. Why don’t we throw a couple million at the single father of eight so he can hire a team of nannies, cooks, and maids to replace his lost wife? We will instead offer him a home, as a safe place to carry out his grieving and to move on with his life. We will tell him, “cash may come and go, but with a warm, sturdy home, you and your family will always be safe.” But that is exactly what tsunami victims do not want to hear.
Bethany Lewis
Bethany Lewis
Each week, millions of Americans kick back and watch as Ty Pennington and his crew of craftsman on Extreme Home Makeover build a dream home for a well-deserving, needy family. Families suffering from the effects of poverty, cancer, handicap, or lost loved ones, are sent on a dream vacation and watch on TV from their five-star hotel rooms at Disney World as their too small, too old, too run-down homes are demolished to make way for their new McMansion. A padded playroom for the boy with brittle bones, an interactive entertainment room for the deaf/blind/autistic family, a home office for the single father of eight who recently lost his wife to cancer-the E.H.M. team gives a week of their time to improve the homes and lives of the needy. Each episode highlights the hours of time and hard labor donated by local townspeople who want to offer support to a neighbor in need.
Just after Christmas, millions of Americans watched again as homes were demolished-this time by tsunami. Those fortunate enough (or not) to be alive are sick, injured, and grieving. For every well-deserving homeless survivor, there are thousands of needy neighbors too busy with their own grieving and rebuilding to offer their help. The set-up appears flawless: tragedy, worthy family, new mansion.
It seems the stuff reality TV producer’s dreams are made of-the E.H.M. crew heads to Phuket to build a mansion for everyone affected by the disaster. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, but most importantly we’ll tune in and double the ratings of either the news or E.H.M. But at a pace of one home per week, Ty alone obviously cannot rebuild the region in his lifetime.
Luckily, he isn’t the only one who can’t say no to a neighbor in need. Those left cringing as images of the Tsunami filled cable news were compelled to open their wallets to donate in record numbers to organizations like the Red Cross and U.N.I.C.E.F. When the media spotlight finds the latest good cause, we give our alms where we are told. What is it about these images that inspire us to give, and to give money? Why do we offer money, of all things, and why does it make us feel that we have done enough?
We see gruesome images on cable news everyday of Iraq, Sudan, and AIDS in Africa. By now, our culture is supposed to be saturated with images of violence and suffering, from both Hollywood and the media, which we are supposed to be detached from or somehow immune to. $350 million is an awful lot of money to come from people who aren’t capable of feeling sympathy for the cause. But what does $350 million buy in a region reduced to rubble, without even a Home Depot to purchase the standard SubZero fridge or a BestBuy for the requisite 40” plasma screen?
We are told money can buy anything but love, though really it can buy anything but time. We give money to victims because that’s all we have to spare. Our lives are micromanaged down to the last second-graduation, college, graduate school, jobs, marriage, children, mortgages. We don’t allow a space to pencil in volunteering months or years of time in the Peace Corps or for Red Cross to rebuild homes for the needy. Even Ty relies on a lucrative salary and endorsement deal with Sears.
Because prior to disaster, we couldn’t offer our time to victims of poverty in South East Asia, now that the worst has happened, all we have left to ensure a good nights’ rest is to toss them money. We think Habitat for Humanity will do all the heavy lifting. Their website gives an image of a dilapidated shack and tattered piece of fabric hanging over two small children with a caption that reads “Help us rid the world of poverty housing like this!” We don’t bother to read the fine print on the website saying that because “as many as five million people are displaced and in need of basic services as a result of the tsunami-earthquake catastrophe,” and as a result Habitat is only equipped to provide “first shelter,” or basic transitional housing that could later be improved upon. How basic? Will they be so basic that once the money stops pouring into the region the “shelters” will look a lot like the poverty housing depicted on the website? But who reads the fine print? Especially when it is next to the boldface type that tells you a $50 donation buys a low-flow toilet. A natural disaster is no time to stop caring about the environment.
Perhaps we really are immune to images of real tragedy if we can’t see hypocrisy in building an Olympic-sized swimming pool and state-of-the-art home gym for the handicapped family in Springfield, and assembling sloppy substandard housing for the tsunami victims. Maybe the distance makes us comfortable enough to throw a few dollars to the Red Cross to let them deal with rebuilding while we spend the rest putting an addition on our own versions of the suburban palace. Why don’t we throw a couple million at the single father of eight so he can hire a team of nannies, cooks, and maids to replace his lost wife? We will instead offer him a home, as a safe place to carry out his grieving and to move on with his life. We will tell him, “cash may come and go, but with a warm, sturdy home, you and your family will always be safe.” But that is exactly what tsunami victims do not want to hear.