How strange that you, of all of us, would prove to be the most hopeful.

On the law of unintended consequences:

All throughout my childhood, really until Oprah took notice of AIDS, the big charity was hunger. We took food to school. We raised money for food. We bought preachy holiday music. We listened to famous dogooders lecture us in concert form. We read article after article about the unfortunate children in the Third World, and we took their plight to heart, and we pledged to feed them. And feed them we did. Generously. Lavishly. The whole Western world threw in.

And the reward for the twenty-year outpouring of generosity? Scientific American’s September issue carries the basic theme: “Everybody on Earth is too fat.” It made me daydream about being the Ghost of Do They Know It’s Christmas Past, getting to put my arm around one of these screeching dogooders, draw him aside and slowly, gently, say, “You told us to feed the world. The world got fed. Extravagantly. What did you think was going to happen?”

I mused on this the other day at Jewel while trying to decide how many things I should pay 10% more to get in pink.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under God, You're An Asshole. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.