Food for thought

Normally I don't give Rosie O'Donnell the time of day in my life, but I was reading Fox news today and curiosity got the better of me. The article was about a photo on her blog of her daughter dressed up as a warfare guerrilla. I of course chalked it up to her being a typical neurotic celebrity seeking attention, but claiming not too. I have very little respect for RO since her stunt in Portland a few years back of trying to get the local radio station to change its name as it was also called Rosie. Can we say, too much time on the hands?! But I went to her blog and started reading a lot of the comments. It was really interesting and people viewed it from all different angles. Some viewed it as I first did, disturbing and horrible. Others saw it for what she claimed it to be, her daughter playing army with her brothers. Some people also saw it as a staged art political comment about how our real kids are dying in the war in Iraq. I decided that some of those other opinions were pretty valid. I found it shocking as we see it in the news here in Israel all too often. Little boys dressed up in guerrilla warfare because that is how they are brought up, that they should want to be a martyr and die in the war against the Jews. But I thought some of her loyal fans made good points. One, that her daughter is playing dress up with her older brothers and people need to get over it. Two, that it is a private blog and the media is just making too much of it. And finally that there are real men, women and children dying over there everyday and not one of them has drawn this much media attention. To me that is really sad. Why does the news make such a big deal over Paris Hilton and how Rosie O'Donells kids are dressed, but not over all the people dying in an actual war.

The other thing that impressed me about RO is that she has a non-profit that is for kids in the U.S. That in itself is not such a big deal, but it is the fact that she points out that 1 in 5 kids in America live in poverty. It has always bothered me to see such huge campaigns for all the starving kids in (insert country here) but have very little information on the large number of kids that are living in deplorable conditions in America, the land of the free and "rich." It is not that kids all over the world do not need help and indeed it is horrible that kids in China and India are working in sweatshops from a very small age, but I also feel it is important to take care of the those in your own house first. Imagine as parents that in our quest to teach children the importance of feeding the homeless our own children went hungry. We would never allow that. And I feel that aid to other countries is very similar we must be sure that things in all areas are right in our house before we can take care of others. This could be said of any country.