An Entertained People
April 18, 2008 by Jonathan Brink
Parade, the little insert that comes in your newspaper on Sundays recently released the salary survey. It details what people make throughout the United States. And as I’m reading the survey, I saw everyday people, just like you and me.
- Shetal Amin, 32, Speech pathologist, Piscataway, N.J., $85,000
- Jana Landry, 48, Language arts teacher, Geismar, La., $48,000
- Roger Buttermore, 61, USDA agricultural officer, Walnut Creek, Calif., $67,000
- LaToya Billingsley, 32, Utility company analyst, Warren, Mich., $52,000
Normal everyday people…And then Bam!
- Cameron Diaz, Actress, Hollywood, CA. $41,000,000.
What? What did Cameron Diaz do that she was worth $41 million? And the article does this over and over and over gain. It’s like this random tease generator that has a deeply embedded irony to it. We like to pay people to entertain us, don’t we, so we don’t have to look at our own brokenness.
In fact the online article actually allows you to compare yourself against the “stars”. I kept thinking, no wonder we’re a self-repressed people. We get articles like this that feed us the lie of, “how much we suck.”
I know I’m probably being judgmental here and when I look at myself I realize that I have no place to be saying this but, I wonder how much of the millions (billions?) of charitable giving from this country comes from the people making the millions of dollars a year. I wonder what would happen if the Cameron Diaz’s (not saying she doesn’t I don’t know) of this country put their wallet where their mouths usually are and stopped building gimongous houses for themselves and started using it for good. I think about Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? my thoughts end at, Hollywood needs Jesus!
It is outrageous. Movie stars, musical performers, pro athletes, corporate CEO’s, best selling authors, television evanglelists - wait! There are church leaders who claim to follow Jesus who earn MILLIONS of dollars a year (or maybe just ‘halfamillions’). I guess in some way they are entertainers as well.