Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, Lassie and Tony Blair: here to save the world
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Version 0 of 1. Did it finally happen? Did the pernicious pretence that is the humanitarian awards industry finally implode last week, at a ceremony to give Tony Blair a “global legacy” gong? On the one hand, things look promising. Well over 100,000 people have signed a petition asking Save the Children to revoke its award. More sensationally, an internal letter signed by Save the Children staff calls the award “morally reprehensible”, which certainly offers a hint of what life is like on the ground, dealing with the sharp end of Mr Blair’s “global legacy”. On the other … don’t let’s get optimistic. It was all the way back in 1973 that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize and, since then, the business of giving humanitarian awards to famous people has mushroomed so wildly out of control that Paris Hilton literally has two of them. Take a look at the official invitation to her most recent garlanding as the American Humane Association’s Humanitarian of the Year, which may as well be captioned: “I, like, care?” More of such give-a-shittery shortly, but first a recap of Mr Blair’s latest triumph. I don’t know how it compares with Mr Kissinger’s Nobel ceremony – I imagine that one featured a song and dance number by the East Timor Orphans Choir, and footage of the bombing of Indochina set to John Lennon’s Imagine. But it seems Tony was feted at a glittering gala in New York, a red carpet event which, you may note from reports, was also attended by Ben Affleck and Lassie. Listen, I just type this stuff. Have to say, though, I had thought better of Lassie. Not since John Wayne claimed to have won her during a poker game during the filming of Hondo has this most principled of collies found her dignity so compromised. I want to believe the best of her – I really do – so I’m just going to picture Lassie barking frantic warnings on the red carpet last week, into the microphones of TV reporters who suddenly speak fluent dog and understand exactly what she’s saying. “What’s that, girl? An emergency, you say? Tony Blair’s about to be given a global legacy award?!?!?! Help! For the love of God, WILL SOMEBODY STOP THIS!” In reality, alas, no one came to Lassie’s aid, and the ceremony passed off without a hitch – another reminder of the old saw: It’s Tony’s world – we just live in it. And every time you stand in a 300ft airport security line with your shoes in a sad little grey tray, on the point of being relieved of 150ml of contact lens cleaner or made to drink some baby formula in front of Bea from Cell Block H’s less cuddly sister, all the while knowing that Tony has never, ever done this – has probably never, in fact, even flown commercial since leaving office – do just take a moment to say thank you. Thank you, Tony, for all the peace-quartetting and children-saving and umbrella-companying you do, you absolute, absolute arse. You know, I’m not a violent person. So were I to design the afterlife, Mr Tony Blair would not burn in unending fires, or come back as a Yazidi girl or whatever. He would just spend all eternity in an airport security line, never quite getting to the front of it, never quite being able to put his shoes back on. But enough of Tony, because the confected awards business is so much bigger than him. Every week, there are several of these ceremonies. Every week, ballrooms are hired, limousines are prepared, gowns are obtained, hair is done, five-star dinners are concocted, all in the cause of honouring a celebrity for something other than their day job. Even in the days leading up to the Oscars, a rash of humanitarian award ceremonies took place in LA, as though movie stars were not being celebrated enough that week. The Ben Hur of humanitarian award winners is, of course, Angelina Jolie. It is frankly impossible to keep up with all the humanitarian awards Angelina has been given in recent years, but they include the Academy’s honorary Oscar for charity work, a gong from the UN Refugee Agency, and the International Rescue Committee’s freedom award. Indeed, it is remarkable how often all existing awards are ruled insufficient for Angelina, resulting in whole new awards having to be invented just to address her contribution. She is the inaugural recipient of awards such as the UN’s Global Humanitarian action award, the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program humanitarian award, the UN Correspondents Association’s Citizen of the World award … Before we go any further, Lost in Showbiz would like to stress that yes, Angelina does a huge and admirable amount for charity. But you know who else does a lot for charity? People who work for charities every day. People whose schedule is so taken up with working for charities that they wouldn’t even be able to take several months of the year off to make multimillion dollar movies. People who get shot at while working for charities. People who might be the face of a movement, were celebrities not always parachuted in to be that face. People who have worked 30 years for minimal pay for charities. People who end up being decapitated in Syria. In fact, the list of people who do a lot for charity is immense, but the quickest way for any of them to determine if they will ever get an award for their efforts is to ask themselves: am I famous for something else? Because if the answer to that is no, I’m afraid they’ll be going away empty-handed. Knowing this, then, the puzzle is why celebrity humanitarians allow themselves to be feted so frequently, at such glitzy galas, when the very idea of philanthropic award ceremonies may seem a contradiction in terms. Is it because it’s the only language the entertainers understand, and they are hardwired not to do humble? Or is it because it is judged that the media has so completely screwed the world that any mention of the glitzy parties will translate into good publicity for the charities? If it is the latter, the Save the Children debacle would appear finally to hint at the limits to such a strategy. |