Here’s a good opening segment from Bill Maher’s latest show: a piece about how even philanthropy that saves lives can be and is criticized by the Purity Police these days. The benefactor in question is a YouTuber named “MrBeast“, who according to Wikipedia is a 25 year old man whose real name is James Stephen “Jimmy” Donaldson. As the site notes, “With over 210 million subscribers, he is the most-subscribed individual on the platform and the second-most-subscribed channel overall.” He rakes in gazillions of dollars, has a team of 250 people, and gives a gazillion dollars away. (His channel is here.)
It’s the fact that a white man gives money away, and directs it to good causes, that has inspired “progressive” critics to deem him simply a “white savior”. As Maher notes, there’s nothing so good for the world that some idiots won’t kvetch about it, and MrBeast is the object of that kvetching. Maher ably defends him in his usual humorous way, getting in some licks against the woke who argue that physical handicaps shouldn’t be fixed.
Great bit. Thanks
It makes me wonder if the Critical Social Justice/Identity Synthesis advocates would be happier with a tradeoff.
When the Covid vaccine came out, every country but the US decided to give priority to the group most likely to die from Covid: the elderly. This was not only easy to administer, but would cut down on the total number of deaths. The US used a different metric.
The 65+ group contained more white people than black. But the group of “essential workers” had a high proportion of people of color. This category wasn’t clear cut and involved a lot of decisions on what jobs did or didn’t qualify, but it presumably helped compensate for past racial injustices so it was originally given higher priority (after health care workers.)
The administration did this even though they knew it would result in more deaths —including more black deaths, given that elderly black people were very vulnerable. The idea seemed to be that, from the broad perspective of Critical Social Justice, saving lives wasn’t the point. The means were more important than the ends because anti-racism was the goal.
Is that what’s going on here? Is it better that Africans die than get saved the “wrong way?” Ideology often trumps common sense. Lives and/or happy lives may be the tradeoff.
Maher’s on fire there -but don’t “piss on his ass”, I’m sure there’s a whole mob ready to take issue with him for the excellent points he made so clearly. What a world.
I have a handicap. Well, two in fact.
I’m with Maher : they ought to be fixed, when possible.
But there is something to the denunciation of savior people. Those saviour people do it for themselves. They often are predators : it is convenient for them to deal with handicapped people because they are weaker than them.
In the worts cases, and in the same way some firemen start fires for the glory of putting them out, some of these people would go as far as making another fellow a disabled just to rescue them.
It is ugly. It is creepy.
I ought to know.
Look up savior syndrome and Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
The best handicapped helpers are those who do not care much, those for whom it is just a job.
The best handicapped helpers are the ones that actually help. I can tell you from second hand experience (my parents both had cataracts and both had operations to fix them) that the people who can now see again won’t be giving a flying f about why Mr Beast is doing it.
I’m sick of people playing football with other people’s lives just to make political points. Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make, as Lord Farquaad said.
Dear Jeremyp,
I fail to understand what “I’m sick of people playing football with other people’s lives just to make political points. Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make, as Lord Farquaad said.” refers to and means.
Can I ask you to elaborate on that ?
Thanks in advance.
It seems that the body positivity message evaporates whenever a transgender person wants to transition. An overweight person is told they (and everybody else) should not just accept but celebrate their body exactly as it is while the a trans teen is told they should go to extreme measures to alter their body and anyone who questions that is a bigot. This does not seem like a coherent ideology or a path to wellbeing for either.
Straight women condemn fat-shaming because they want to see their sexual rivals eat themselves out of the bitter mating competition for the few desirable three x 6 men. (6 feet, 6 figures, 6 inches.) They even make friendships with fat women to look good by comparison. Try being a fat man and see how many women celebrate your body positivity. Nobody finds fat women sexually attractive and neither men nor women can be guilted into thinking otherwise. It’s simply a cynical ruse to hobble the competition.
Since attractive women don’t give a crap about trans ideology, I’m sure the contradiction you artfully point out never enters their minds.
Fred Hollows devoted his life to helping underprivileged peoples with sight problems.
He was lauded, now we know was just a white saviour ableist asshole.
A similar thing happened in 2019 in the UK when an MP, David Lammy, criticized an English TV presenter named Stacey Dooley, a red haired white woman, who put up photos of her trip to Uganda for a British Charity called Comic Relief that does a huge annual event called “Red Nose Day” that raises a lot of money. He said that “the world does not need any more white saviours”, and that she was “perpetuating ‘tired and unhelpful stereotypes’ about Africa”.
According to Wikipedia, “The donations received for the Red Nose Day broadcast in March 2019 fell by £8 million and the money raised that year was the lowest since 2007, which some have blamed on Lammy’s remarks”.
My wife is very impressed with Mr Beast. She’s 67, and still working partly because she donates so much to her favourite cause, a charity she has set up which has built an orphanage for AIDS-affected and AIDS-orphaned kids in Kenya. It has also built an elementary school in the Masai Mara, and drilled two wells (each costs around $50k). Before anyone criticizes him as a “white saviour” they should ask the beneficiaries of his work whether they are insulted, or delighted. It seems they would be surprised, if only they would bother. Such criticism serves only one purpose, to aggrandize themselves by covering up their own guilt at being totally ineffectual when it comes to making the world any better.
And as for alleviating disabilities, I can say that having lost one ear totally and half the hearing in the other at the age of eight (nerve deafness from streptomycin, so a hearing aid won’t help. Ironic that there was a brief fashion for treating otitis media with an IM shot of streptomycin—wouldn’t want that infection to damage your hearing, would we?), I would be delighted to hear properly. As it is, the commonest sentence heard (by some) in this household is “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” It was difficult using a stethoscope when I worked, and it is a frustration now as I’m a music lover and I want to turn up the volume to levels uncomfortable for her. I’m sure Mr Beast will continue his good works, not only despite the carping of the woke, but probably will take even more pleasure in it because of it.
The best handicapped helpers are the ones that actually help. I can tell you from second hand experience (my parents both had cataracts and both had operations to fix them) that the people who can now see again won’t be giving a flying f about why Mr Beast is doing it.
From Bulleyez