Word: childrened
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...cast of Jersey Shore - gearing up to shoot Season 2 in the next few months - camera-readiness is second nature. These are the children of reality TV. In February 1992 - literally a generation ago - The Real World introduced MTV's viewers to living in public. Ten years ago, Survivor - now in its 20th season - mainstreamed the idea for older viewers. The Jersey Shore-ites have never known a world in which hooking up drunk in a house paid for by a Viacom network was not an option. This year in the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot, CBS showcased...
...that spread when crushed limbs aren't amputated fast enough. Help never arrives fast enough because no two disasters are alike and chaos is an agile enemy. So I wondered how we would feel, after texting our $10 donations to the Red Cross and writing checks to Save the Children, still coming home night after night to the growing mass grave on our flat-screens...
Desperation deforms judgment, and not just among victims. Thus we meet missionary Laura Silsby and her flock, who in the face of so much suffering set out from Boise, Idaho, with a trailer full of children's clothes and a vow to help Haiti's orphans "find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ." "Our hearts were in the right place," she insisted, but her head was somewhere else entirely, and they all wound up in jail. We know a bit more now about her regard for the niceties of law and protocol: unpaid debts, civil lawsuits, a house...
...also know that the families she encountered were desperate to survive. Parents were told their children would be cared for and schooled in the Dominican Republic; the families could even visit. "If someone offers to take my children to a paradise," a mother told the New York Times, "am I supposed to say no?" Silsby was warned by local officials about obtaining proper papers, and by that mark alone, her behavior was criminal. But it was also criminally naive...
...medicines that Indonesian officials had to throw out. People sent Viagra and Santa suits, high-heeled shoes and evening gowns. A year later, after an earthquake in Pakistan, so much unusable clothing arrived that people burned it to stay warm. It may make us feel good to put together children's care packages with cards and teddy bears--but whose needs are we trying to meet...