In this world of ours there is much suffering. People go hungry, the environment is under threat, terrible wars leave children orphaned.
If you were a person with great wealth and influence in a world like this, it’s understandable that you would be compelled to use what power you had to try and make the world better. Not just by making yourself a robot suit or dressing up as a bat to fight crime (although naturally you would do that too) but by investing your money where it can do real good, and raising awareness of important issues.
There are plenty of people in the world who have done just this. The thing is – we really can’t stand them.
For example:
Bono
What Good Has He Done? Aside from singing With Or Without You, Bono has become known for a huge array of humanitarian projects. These include singing on the Band Aid single and collaborating with Bob Geldof for the Live8 concerts that were part of the Make Poverty History Campaign. The man has been knighted, named Person of the Year by TIME magazine, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has won a TED prize.
One of his most public campaigns (and that’s saying something, they’re all pretty public) has been the Product Red campaign, where companies such as Apple, GAP, Starbucks and Converse have been encouraged to release special products that help raise funds to fight the AIDS pandemic in Africa.
And Yet… Okay, before we go any further can we just take another look at Bono please?
He just looks like someone you want to punch. The jacket with the peace sign on the side, sunglasses in the middle of the day, but most of all, the smugness. The constant, unending waves of smugness.
We are, after all, talking about a multi-millionaire who thinks that you should be doing more for charity. We’re talking about a man who, when he forgot his favorite hat, paid £1,000 to have it flown to Italy in a first class seat. So even if we give him the deserved credit for his charity work, listening to someone this absolutely stinking rich lecture us about poverty is bound to stick in the throat a little
But let’s take a look at that Product Red campaign for a second. We’re talking about an incredibly rich person telling you to buy big name products such as a $200 pair of Dr Dre headphones, from massive corporations like Coca Cola and Starbucks, a percentage of the profits- not the price, the profits, go towards a good cause.
Indeed, one enterprising person has gone so far as to set up the website Buy (Less), which both takes the piss out of Bono’s campaign while pointing you to several charities you could just give money to instead.
Bill Gates
Whatever he may have done in the past, Bill Gates is one of the biggest charitable donors on the planet right now. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given US$800 million to global health projects every year, and that’s just the start.
The foundation invests heavily in improving agriculture combat world hunger, funding the reconstruction of libraries after Hurricane Katrina and helping schools.
It’s like Batman decided to quit jumping around rooftops in a stupid costume and actually use his money to help people.
And Yet… We can never forget.
Maybe this is our fault. Maybe it’s time we moved past this. But most of us grew up in a world where Bill Gates was the evil overlord of the computing world, while Apple was the plucky underdog.
The world has changed since then. Microsoft has gone from being pretty much the only software company on the market to Hotmail being the email address you give to people who you think will spam you and Bing being the search engine you use… never. Apple has turned into a massive behemoth with draconian controls that tell you what you can install on your own machines, which Apple had manufactured by impoverished Chinese workers who will literally kill themselves rather than face another day at work.
And it’s been years since Bill Gates has even had anything to do with Microsoft.
But not matter how much good he does in this world before he passes on, we’ll always remember him for the blue screen of death.
Al Gore
Former Presidential candidate and the man who many people believe won the 2000 US Presidential election, Al Gore has now turned his efforts towards saving the planet. The film An Inconvenient Truth, about Al Gore’s environmentalist campaigning went on to win two Academy Awards and become the go to title to parody if you want to mock the green movement.
Exactly the calm, measured, academic way of speaking the made him sound like such a massive dullard when he was running for office now makes him sound like the Dennis Quaid character in The Day After Tomorrow. And he does it all while rocking a sweater vest and side parting.
He’s appeared in no less than four episodes of Futurama and two episodes of 30 Rock and at college he was roommates with Tommy Lee Jones! How can you not love that?
And yet… Like Bono, Al Gore has a weakness for big houses and private jets, neither of which are known for their output of sunshine and rainbows. And he does come across sort of school teachery, which bugs people. But…
No, no I can’t do it. I’m sorry but he was really good in Futurama.
About the author: Chris Farnell is a freelance writer who covers charity jobs, business and entertainment. If he had as much money as anyone on this list he would spend it on making a rocketship out of gold.
Photo Credits: Howard Lake, Bob Reck, U2005, Thomas Hawk, Chris Pirillo, World Economic Forum and José Luís Agapito, respectively.