The part about the podcast that was of interest to me was the inactivity of all of us when we have so many resources. I believe Bono said, "we're standing aroud with watering cans when we really need the fire brigade".
His speech on Ethiopia's level of poverty was also eye-opening. When he said there was a waiting time of about seven years to get a land line in some places and that a majority of people were living on less than a dollar a day, it because apparent to me that this was actually an emergency, as he stated. Yet we continue to ignore it every night on the news, opting for stories about Paris Hilton's three days or so in jail, or the deaths and murder-suicides of several steroid-abusing pro-wrestlers. This obviously says something about the ethics in America and what we choose to put on the news. News is simply entertainment now.
I also agreed with Bono when he said that America doesn't care about a tragedy unless it happens in a super-cool explosion or crash, something tragic and immediate. Because no people are being blown up in poverty-stricken countries, they are not getting adequate attention. When Hurricane Katrina struck, and when the tsunami in Asia happened, money practically flew out of our pockets to help the injured and homeless left stranded by the disaster. But no money is flying, because we seem to simply have forgotten about the number of people dying every day. Were it in headlines again, I'm sure America would be giving more money, but what isn't important in the media at the moment isn't important to a majority of American citizens.
Today, every day, 9,000 more Africans will catch HIV because of stigmatization and lack of education. That's not a cause. That's
an emergency.
