Word: famed
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...inspired [Dec. 26, 2005-Jan. 2, 2006]. In a year marked by unusual tragedy, it was heartwarming to read about an unprecedented outpouring of generosity. Your honorees are not only appropriately symbolic of that philanthropy but also unique examples of individuals who, by virtue of their wealth and fame, can change the course of history. What your story revealed, however, was that not just their wealth and fame heightened their impact. Credit the Gateses for learning firsthand about the diseases of the poor, then making careful choices about the deployment of dollars to ensure the greatest possible return for humankind...
Such is the nature of Bono's fame that just about everyone in the world wants to meet him--except for the richest man in the world, who thought it would be a waste of time. "World health is immensely complicated," says Gates, recalling that first encounter in 2002. "It doesn't really boil down to a 'Let's be nice' analysis. So I thought a meeting wouldn't be all that valuable...
...rock singer Amy Grant bestows largesse on needy people every week. Time was, the occasional celebrity like Audrey Hepburn would lend her profile to a cause. But Grant and Makeover's Ty Pennington are a distinct kind of charitainment star, celebrities whose good deeds are their chief claim to fame. Their shows aim not just to solve personal problems (help autistic kids, build a school library) but also to salve the nation's wounds (build houses for soldiers in Iraq, give a new start to a Katrina refugee family...
...perhaps above all is the need to rationalize the weirdness of celebrity. Fame is like a superpower, conferred near instantly on once ordinary people, unless you're a royal or a Minnelli. Celebrities can make us pay good money to watch movies based on TV shows we wouldn't watch for free in reruns. They change our clothes and haircuts. They even get us to buy--God help us--puggles. You should be grateful that Sharon Stone and Tom Hanks merely ask you to join the fight against AIDS. They could just as easily command you to build a pair...
DIED. JAMES INGO FREED, 75, soft-spoken New York architect who catapulted to international fame as the much hailed designer of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, above, in Washington; of complications of Parkinson's disease; in New York City. Freed, an émigré from Nazi Germany who became the longtime business partner of I.M. Pei, designed, among other things, Manhattan's sprawling Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Washington's Ronald Reagan Building. Of the Holocaust Museum's hexagonal, skylighted Hall of Remembrance, he said, "Light is the only thing I know that heals. People at the camps said...