FNB Editorial: Giving ‘Till It Hurts

There’s an interesting documentary on PBS this weekend called “A Passion for Giving,” which examines the basis for what makes people give and why they do it. It’s a pretty big task for a 50-minute documentary, and director Robin Melanie Leacock certainly makes a yeoman’s effort to complete it. Whether or not the director succeeds in getting her point across is probably for the individual viewer to decide, and while we have some issues with her execution, we do think the end result is compelling enough for you to set your DVR Saturday night and give it a watch.

The reason we’re writing about it this week is because it made us think about celebrities and their charities and the concept of giving, especially on this, the eve of the holiday season. The idea of what makes people give, and why it needs to be examined, is kind of fascinating to us, because we’ve always thought it comes down to making ourselves feel good. This is discussed to some extent in the documentary, and while we were amused by the theories of some (Fran Leibowitz, for instance, has what we believe is a fairly naïve and simplistic concept of society and giving), and intrigued by others (Donna Karan’s concept of motherhood making one feel more connected with the rest of the world), we leave it to Russell Simmons to echo our own understanding of the whole thing when he says, “It’s a selfish practice to be compassionate.” Our sentiments exactly.

We’ve often held that celebrities — the kind who actually earn their fame, and not the ones whose fame is manufactured or are, for instance, “famous for being famous,” because that’s an entirely different kind of animal — are pretty much like everyone else, in that some of them are really fantastic people, some are jerks, and most are somewhere in between. Because of that, there will always be certain celebrities who will use their name to raise money and/or awareness for a specific cause, others who want nothing at all to do with giving and still others who prefer to perform their charity anonymously.

In a perfect world, there would be no need for charities or foundations but, sadly, we don’t live in that world, so sometimes we have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help us get where we need to go. It’s nice when those strangers who have found some kind of success give back to the community in some way, which is what continues to give us faith in the human condition. Watching “A Passion for Giving” isn’t going to save the world, but it will make you think about how you can do your part.

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