generalspeaking

Oh, The Righteous!

First there was Nobel-prize-winning Al Gore, former vice-president to President Clinton of the United States, with his influential environmental book "An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency", and the prize-winning film that followed it. Al Gore with his impassioned truth about Global Warming and the human-derived emergency that the Globe was facing.

And then, the revelations about his palatial mansion, energy-intensive and costly. His patrician requirements for everyday living represented a huge waste of energy, at the very time that he was castigating the world at large for its wasteful ways. Warning of the Apocalypse to come, thanks to the wastrel world of energy-consumption. He, of course, was exempt from the need to become prudent in energy use, not we.

Then there was Bono, with his public denunciations of world leaders who would not immediately buy into his war against world poverty and preventable diseases. He worked the political elite and the social creme de la creme to popularize the funding and commitment to poverty-reducing programs. Through his influence and his band's he was instrumental in raising millions for poverty reduction.

And then there's the Bono who hugely values his own star-quality personal investments. To the extent that U2 handily moved part of their business operations to the Netherlands to avoid paying a painful amount of tax to the tax-hungry, newly-impoverished Irish government. This was one government he could condemn for not sufficiently funding poverty abroad, while he himself was evading paying taxes to enable it to do so.

Now we have another world-saviour, Michael Moore, whose outraged condemnations of corporations who prey on the populace and pull up stakes, leaving masses of unemployed for greener pastures where production costs are lower and wages a fraction of what they are in the United States. Michael Moore represents as a leading and enthusiastic supporter of the Occupy movement.

Having little but contempt for Wall Street and corporate interests for their consummate adeptness in rolling in profits while denying a living wage, much less a decent employment opportunity to the poor working stiff. He sympathizes immensely with the downtrodden of the world. They are his people, the humble and the unassuming, the needy and the abandoned. They have his unalloyed support.

But they certainly don't have his wealth. Photographs of a palatial "second home" owned by Michael Moore on Torch Lake in Michigan have emerged, where he just happens to live alongside other wealthy entertainers - and gee whiz - titans of the corporate world of disgusting profits. Real estate agents in the area give estimates of the home's value at $2-million, not bad for a defender of the weak and defenceless.

"How can I be in the 1%?" he asks peevishly. "Even though I do well, I don't associate myself with those who do well. I am devoting my life to those who have less and have been crapped on by the system."

Seems more like he's crapping on those who look up to him.

Labels: Charity, Communication, Corruption

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 16, 2011