My attention was caught last evening by one of those television advertisements wanting me to sponsor a child from a war torn, impoverished country so that their community can afford to build a school, a fresh water well and a rifle range. Now I’m not adverse to this type of thing, and I do understand that successful economies like ours are dependant on our ability to exploit other countries like the one in the advertisement - but there are aspects of this type of campaign that really turns my rice into pudding.
The first thing that strikes me as being a latte short of a mid-morning brunch is the price that they want to tag to this sponsorship deal. I remember when it used to be a dollar a day – now it’s “a little more than the price of a cup of coffee a day”. Now come on, I know what a cup of coffee costs these days – and what will I get out of the deal? I mean, coffee… sponsor a kid?… coffee… sponsor a kid? I don’t have time in my busy schedule to reconsider my priorities like this without an obvious return on my investment.
Then I notice that the person fronting these campaigns is always a former celebrity who, even in their prime, was best known for their guest appearance roles on shows like ‘The Love Boat’, 'MacGyver' and ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ (No Mum, you're thinking of 'America's Most Wanted'... yes Mum, I'm sure John Walsh is cute).
Anyway, this particular former celebrity is a few doughnuts short of the broadside of a barn. It’s like having Kirsty Alley advertise a new dietary programme, you know you’re on a hiding to nothing. But here they are, the one-time celebrity in their ‘sleeps up to eight’ kaftan, eclipsing seven hundred half starved Bulgarians or wherever they’re from, telling me that I should save these kids from the doom of their circumstance. Hello fat lady – give them a sandwich!!!
Then I have to think about the practicality of the kids themselves. The first thing I notice about the kids is their physique. Although this is a sponsorship deal, I can’t see a single athlete amongst them. Sure, some of the little Zimbabwean kids might make good track and field competitors – they can certainly run in record time to escape the guy with the machine gun. But the land mine damaged Vietnamese kids have more than just a few barriers to overcome as part of their training schedule. There are definitely no high jumpers amongst that lot.
The next thing I notice is their names – like they don’t have normal names like John or David or Eric… they’re all called Zingermewotsi and Chewintobasco – names like that. It’s not that I have a problem with foreign names, I have a friend called Jacques. But for George Michael’s sake, how am I going to fit ‘Zingermewotsi’ on a Team T-shirt – especially when he’s a size 00?
Then I get to wonder why these kids are in their predicament in the first place. Where are their parents? Well just as I ask this question, the Kirsty Alley look-alike with a lunchbox the size of a decommissioned Hummer explains that poor Terabyteechee’s father was taken away by the current Dictator’s soldiers and has been jailed as a political prisoner. So I have to ask myself, as much as I feel sorry for wee Terabyteechee, do I really want to be seen sponsoring the child of a detained criminal?
Now it may seem that I am totally against this sponsorship lark – and perhaps I am a little. You see, I do feel empathy for little Zingermewotsi, Chewintobasco and Terabyteechee; why I even feel sorry for Miss Jonah the celebrity supertanker with her eclipsed Bulgarian orbiting satellites. But in the end, I think it’s important to look to your own backyard first – well, at least the backyard of someone who lives on the other side of town; just past the chicken processing plant, by the scrap metal yard and down a bit from Lloyd’s Plumbing and Gasfitters. I’m sorry Terabyteechee, but there’s probably a kid called John or Shane somewhere closer to home that could do with a cup of coffee just as much as you – and their name will fit on the T-shirt…
That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.
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