One of the more charming aspects of a great natural or human caused disaster is when celebrities band together and put on a show to raise money for the victims. It’s a chance for the privileged class of actors and musicians to show how much they care about the little people. The Hand In Hand telethon to raise money for Harvey and Irma victims was supposed to be just that. There was to be a lot of singing and begging for money, with a good time had by all. Unfortunately, as the Daily Caller notes, it took Stevie Wonder just 15 Seconds to ruin everything by getting political.
Stevie Wonder decided to lecture before he sang
The first performing artist who was up was Stevie Wonder, who has entertained millions for decades. Before sitting down to sing for the contributions, he said, “Anyone who believes that there’s no such thing as global warming must be blind or unintelligent.” One can only opine that a lack of intelligent forethought was on display just then. One could just sense the millions of remotes being grabbed and channels being switched to cable movie channels.
Virtue signaling while raising money
What Wonder did, and Beyonce as well, was to insult the very people he was trying to help by pretending to be a climate scientist as well as a musician. It has been noted before but bears repeating that actual climate scientists, including the folks at NOAA, have stated that the connection between storms like Harvey and Irma and climate change is tenuous at best.
If global warming caused the two hurricanes, it must have also caused the great hurricane drought that occurred in the previous 12 years.
One thing that people who are contemplating their flooded out and wind destroyed homes do not want to hear is a wealthy performing artist telling them, in effect, that they brought it on themselves by driving their cars or cranking up their air conditioners.
At least Stevie Wonder did not emulate Jennifer Lawrence by claiming that Harvey and Irma were the wrath of Mother Gaia for electing Donald Trump.
Leave your egos at the door
Way back when Quincy Jones was doing the “We are the World” recording session to raise money for African famine relief in the mid-1980s he advised the performing artists participating to leave their egos at the door.
Ironically Stevie Wonder was a participant in that worthy effort as well. Too bad he didn’t remember Jones’ advice and did not remember that it was not about him, but for the victims, many of whom lost everything. They need help and not political posturing.
