It may make me sound like a cliche liberal, but the truth is that when big money gets involved in any good cause, the “good cause” part usually goes south pretty quick. I am not opposed to capitalism, or to some company making money, but I am opposed to the naked greed that most of them exhibit, the idea that anything that makes us richer is ipso facto the right thing to so.
The problem is that with more money comes more people to please, and more pressure to protect the stockholders, to pump up the bottom line. A little history will tell you that nearly every social institution in this country, from hospitals to orphanages to veterans care was started by women, women who simply wanted to make someone’s life better; it was when these institutions proved they could make money that men and governments came in and took them over. Now, even hospitals as prestigious as Walter Reade are run by bankers and accountants, but hey, if a few sick people get treatment while we rake in corporate donations, that’s cool too. For Hells, sake even the Vatican, the Vatican, that place that’s supposed to be all about saving souls, is just another corrupt business; seems Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was deputy mayor of Vatican City, in charge of maintaining the many fountains, gardens and ancient buildings, and he discovered (gasp!) a network of bribes, payoffs and financial shenanigans in the awarding of contracts. When he brought this to the attention of his superiors, you know, those other holy guys, he was transferred for being a whistle-blower!
Another example is Twitter, who when they’re not congratulating themselves for being bastions of free expression between jilling themselves silly over Kim Kardashian, are jumping through hoops to cooperate with oppressive regimes like China, and promising to toe the government line on censorship and thought policing, as long as it means cash in their pockets.
The most recent egregious example of this attitude is making the news, as the Susan G. Komen Foundation, taking time out from putting pink ribbons on everything they can, has decided to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings and mammograms. Apparently, saving lives is no longer as important as getting in good with the Republican nutbags who want to rule the world; several high officials have resigned, and our mayor Mike Bloomberg has done a surprisingly good thing, pledging a quarter of a million dollars to keep getting poor women the health care they deserve. This is all due to new vice president Karen Handel, a brain damaged Republican who spread the usual lies about Planned Parenthood in her failed bid for the governorship of Georgia, and now promising the SGK big southern state money if they give up of PP. Apparently more interested in flying their corporate jets than something that might save the lives of poor women, the SGK claims that this is a rule about not dealing with clients under government investigation, and that “many people approve”; I’m sure that’s true, the “many people” being the ones who want to keep those donations rolling in and making them all rich.
It’s hard to believe that anybody has any morals left when these kind of things happen; an institution specifically founded to save women from breast cancer is pulling money from a place…that saves women from breast cancer! What kind of logic is this? Would you ask your surgeon who he backed in the last election? Would you only pick a dentist who voted for your favorite contestant on American Idol? Why can’t these idiots separate their disdain for abortion (which I admit that they are entitled to) from a health service organization that does so many things for the women who need it most?
We all have beliefs we hold dear, but to carry them to the extreme that these folk do, to cling so tenaciously to your misguided notions that you actually betray what you claim you stand for, like guys who murder abortion doctors because they believe that abortion is murder, that is a truly despicable act, and one that has nothing to do with a good cause, and everything to do with plain old batshit crazy, refusing to see things as they truly are.
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