Hope for Haiti
The unimaginable horror of what happened in the small island country of Haiti last week has certainly been omnipresent on the news and elsewhere since last week’s earthquake. And it will certainly be omnipresent tonight come 8 p.m. (ET and PT, but at 7 p.m. CT), when the telethon, Hope for Haiti kicks off on a slew of different cable and broadcast channels.
It’s a live event, with seemingly every A-list celebrity on board, from George Clooney, the event’s organizer, to Bono, to Jennifer Anniston, to Brad Pitt to… Well, just about everybody who’s anybody.
This is a telethon, as in they’re trying to raise money for relief for Haiti – which as a country was not doing so well before the earthquake, thanks to overwhelming poverty, political corruption and some really bad infrastructure. Unlike many of its Caribbean neighbors, it didn’t have much of a tourist trade to rely on, either.
According to the MTV press release (and apparently, Clooney got the ball rolling with them), the proceeds from the event will be split evenly among the five relief agencies currently working there already. In fact, you can text the Yele Haiti Foundation, www.yele.org, at 501501 to give that way.
This is one of those golden moments when television is at its best. MTV isn’t the only network airing the special. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, BET, The CW, HBO, VH1 and CMT hopped aboard early. Several others have joined in, including TVOne today.
The cynics among us might sniff at the supposed altruism – nobody wants to look like a bad guy. But I have to hope that this raises a boatload of money and then some for Haiti. Part of me knows they could really use it. But the cynic in me hopes that certain TV executives will get the idea that doing good is also good business.
Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer
