Everybody is more or less as dreadful as the person standing beside them. This isn't cynicism, it is the truth and I will tell you why: because, as Jean Renoir once put "Everybody has their reasons, therein lies the tragedy."
This axiom (which also inverts itself: everybody is a s great as everybody else), kills the powerful, the rich, the glamorous. And it causes them to trip and fall on their faces.
According to Andrea Peyser in the New York Post, George Clooney once poured money into a small village in Africa: built wells, irrigation houses. Wonderful gesture, right? Then he left and the village next door invaded them and killed some people to get to the well.
Madonna has made an even greater mess of things with her Malawi school for girls. She raised $3.8 Million and every penny is gone before a single brick is in place.
I used to work for a very famous American charity , who at least had a clue how to afford largesse.
Madonna, like everybody from Harrison's Bangladesh to Geldof's Live Aid and on to Haiti, got snookered. She thought she was something she wasn't, she wanted to give back and her and her rich fans got taken.
Why? Because she doesn't REALLY CARE ENOUGH TO DO THE BULLSHIT WORK SHE NEEDED TO DO.
Like Haiti, like Japan, like all these cats, it is 2/3rd publicity stunt and 1/3rd misplaced philanthropy.
And it is yet another indictment of the world of celebrities.