Once again Hollywood is on the attack. This time with a “PSA” about Protecting Insurance Companies. Click HERE to view the video via Funny Or Die (a new window will open). NOTE: I didn’t embed the video due the preview slowing down the site.
Of course the predictable “Hollywood are a bunch of stupid, clueless, latte liberal elites” (implied not said) from various sources in Right Blogtopia such as Hot Air, Riehl World View, and Michelle Malkin has started. And the also predictable “I don’t watch any of those Hollywood liberal elites but I really enjoy Heroes, CSI, and other TV series along with their movies on the big screen” is there in the comment sections as well (don’t get upset, Hollywood HAS us…your principals aren’t compromised by watching a flick with a “stoopid Hollywood elite” in it). Happens all the time when Hollywood gets all political and stuff. All that being said, I have a question for Hollywood:
Why do these type of political commercials/PSAs/infomercials anyway Hollywood?
All of you are filthy rich and I’m not mad at you for being filthy rich. The market is what it is. But wouldn’t you be more effective taking your sizable cash reserves and impacting the health care debate directly by, let’s say, starting your own insurance company? Building clinics and hospitals? You know? Sticking it to THE MAN by making something better? But that takes work. And sometimes that work is hard and painful. Case in point, former NBA great Dikembe Mutombo’s hospital project in The Democratic Republic of Congo (from Wikipedia):
In 1997, Mutombo with the Mutombo Foundation began plans to open a $29 million, 300-bed hospital on the outskirts of his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Ground was broken in 2001, but construction didn’t start until 2004, as Mutombo had trouble getting donations early on although Mutombo personally donated $3.5 million toward the hospital’s construction. Initially Mutombo had some other difficulties, almost losing the land to the government because it was not being used and having to pay refugees who had begun farming the land to leave. He also struggled to reassure some that he did not have any ulterior or political motives for the project. However, the project has been on the whole very well received at all social and economic levels in Kinshasa.
On August 14, 2006, Dikembe had donated $15 million to the completion of the hospital for its ceremonial opening on September 2, 2006. The hospital was by then named Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named for his late mother, who died of a stroke in 1997.
When it opened in February 2007, the $29 million facility became the first modern medical facility to be built in that area in nearly 40 years. His hospital is on a 12-acre (49,000 m2) site on the outskirts of Kinshasa in Masina, where about a quarter of the city’s 7.5 million residents live in poverty. It is minutes from Kinshasa’s airport and near a bustling open-air market. The hospital has full telemedicine capabilities with the United States and Europe through the network established by Medical Missions for Children.
I followed Dikembe Mutombo’s hospital project very closely. And that man dedicated his livelihood and his life to build that hospital. And he succeeding with dogged determination, drive, and an admirable resilience.
Hey Hollywood, I know some of you are putting your cash where your mouth is. But in general your not. How about following Mutombo’s lead and doing something tangible instead of talking? Don’t worry, many of us will still watch you on TV and in the mega movieplexes. But money talks. How’s about letting it talk for awhile?
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By the way, I’m in love with Anna Torv of Fringe. I have to marry her… in another lifetime of course! See Hollywood? The love is still there.
I’m not complex. Don’t have time for all that. And all that complex stuff bad for the stomach. Just color me simple and plain with a twist.