People used to be able to say that about the Red Cross and the United Way too, but executives were skimming millions in both organizations in past years. I have no evidence that is happening with Make a Wish, but it is the perfect type of organization to use as a scam if unethical people were in positions of responsibility.
A point I’m skeptical of is that meeting with a celebrity for an hour or so really makes the difference between a happy life/death and a sad life/death, or really any significant improvement in quality of life/death at all.
Perhaps it’s unfair - and I believe there are similar organizations out there; I saw an ad for one recently but the name escapes me. But even if it’s stupid, terminally ill kids are seen as being particularly in need of some cheering up. You could say the cause just tugs on people’s heartstrings irrationally.
It makes no difference what you prefer to call it.
I’m not sure where the “more enthusiastically” part comes from. Do you mean because it’s volunteering a small amount of time instead of being forced to spend a lot of it? Nobody’s asking the athlete to be a caregiver or make decisions on treatment; it’s a minor cheerleading action that can do a disproportionate amount to make someone feel better.
I’d say no.
It’s unfortunate you feel that way, and I think you’re very misguided. Some people are going to die before their illnesses are cured. In fact, some start out with very little hope in the first place. If you want to donate to something else, go for it - I’ve had the same thought. But there’s still a great deal of value in cheering up people who are not likely to recover. In any case, nobody’s being asked to choose between one or the other.
Based on first hand experience, I have to say yes. I found myself surprised by it, but it turns out if you give a kid something he’s always wanted, it makes him very happy. Even if he’s really sick.
It’s not that the charity is special…it’s that many of us do think that children who are dying are a special group of people who deserve special compassion.
To most people, there is something particularly tragic about a young person dying before fully experiencing life. Even my adult family member who has terminal cancer says that thinking about kids with cancer puts her own illness in perspective because at least she has had a chance to live her life. If it’s within our power to give a dying kid something a little closer to a normal, happy life, then most people would want to do it.
If you were a celeb, you’d be within your rights to say that you don’t give a crap about dying kids and would rather hang out with your buddies than do something kind for a child who specifically requested some help from you in making their final days a little less frightening and horrible. The rest of society is within our rights to say you are a selfish asshole for making that choice, however.
As I mentioned earlier, I would expect a celebrity who genuinely cared to try to work out some kind of acknowledgment even if it was impossible to visit the kid(s). (I really don’t think that the problem in this case was that he was just SO busy visiting so many other dying kids though).
Unfortunately, NOTHING any of us does in this world actually matters in the long run. Every human being will eventually die (yes, even those who try to deny their mortality by avoiding meetings with terminally ill kids) and anything human society constructed will eventually decay or crumble in keeping with the increasing entropy of the universe.
But while we’re here, any gesture that tries to make life kinder or nicer for our fellow human being seems laudable.
Even if you don’t think the happiness of a 7 year old who got to live out his dream of being a police man right before he died matters now that he’s gone, I bet his surviving family members still cherish the memory of seeing their long-suffering child happy one last time…as well as probably being touched by the compassion of those who cared enough to help in such a horrible time.
Everyone who dies of illness is going to die before their illness is cured. I’m not sure of the stats, but I imagine far more people die from illness rather than accident or deliberate action.
I give thousands of pounds to charity yearly. That includes the hospice where my Mum died (and I spent a week visiting her daily).
- When I walk past a street collector, they glare and sometimes call out “Don’t you care?”
- I spent 2 years in grief counselling after Mum died. I couldn’t go to a hospice to comfort anyone for charity.
Oh yes, it’s not a special charity, but the celebrities who don’t play ball with it are assholes, by definition of many here. Can you name one other charity that evokes that kind of response? I can’t, because of the emotional weight of the subject matter.
And jeez, I’m not talking about long term compared to the lifespan of the sun. I’m talking about long term compared to the life of the dying child, or my own life, or yours.
True, but I think you completely missed my point. If you’d rather donate to a charity other than to the Make A Wish foundation, I’d never argue with you about it. A couple of times recently, I’ve found myself on point of arguing with people after they encouraged others to donate to Make A Wish. I found myself wanting to say “Or better yet, donate to a group working for a cure, so there aren’t as many kids making wishes in the first place.” In point of fact there’s a place for both.
I think that’s separate from celebrities granting wishes, because if you were asked to grant a wish by shooting hoops with a child or something similar, and refused because hey, we’re all gonna die someday and what’s it matter, I’d wonder if you had any human feeling at all. So it’s not the same thing.
I disagree. If you are a top-rated professional athlete, the only expectation people should have is that they do what is necessary to play to the best of their ability.
Anything beyond that is fundamentally nothing more than the wish fulfillment of fans who think that just because someone can throw a ball accurately or can deliver lines well in front of a camera is some sort of hero who should be held to a higher level of expectation for some reason.
The only real jerk I see is you, for assuming that people have some sort of inherent obligation to charities just because they’re exceptionally good at their chosen profession.
My point was simply that if you think about the question not as “What’s so special about Make a Wish” but simply rephrase it as “What’s so special about dying kids?” the answer should be self-evident. I think most people would agree that a 90 year old who dies peacefully in his sleep after a long, full life isn’t tragic in the same sense that a 7 year old dying slowly of leukemia is. These wishes are an attempt to balance out (in part) the tragedy of these kids never getting to experience the many smaller joys of life that the rest of us will get to experience over the course of a normal lifespan. It’s probably also a bit of a respite for the family from dwelling on the illness. It’s more pleasant to be able to look forward to the day your kid gets to meet Michael Jordan instead of just marking the days until the inevitable end comes.
As for the “long run”, well, I’m just saying that the material world’s impermanence either means nothing we do matters or everything we do matters. To me, it doesn’t make any sense to that one person’s joy is meaningless because they died the next day but another person’s joy means a lot more because they died 40 years later. In the end, the result is the same!
Fan support is what allows these guys to play a sport for a living. It used to be that professional athletes had to work jobs in the offseason to augment their salaries; today even an average professional athlete out-earns the typical fan by a very large margin. This is part of why professional leagues go out of their way to appear charitable.
I feel like I’m harping on a tiny, tiny point in a much larger issue, but along the lines of making conversation … I agree that the two or three hours it takes to participate in one Wish aren’t that significant, but it’s more of a thin edge of the wedge issue. If the celebrity agrees to one Wish, then why not two Wishes? How about three Wishes? Surely four isn’t that many more than three … and then you have the whole other issue of other organizations. If the celebrity spent a few quality hours with a sick child, how about a few hours reading to the blind? Visiting VA hospitals? Building houses for homeless people?
When I worked in fundraising, I received many polite notes from celebrities that declined to participate that went something along these lines …
“In honor of the wonderful care my home-bound grandmother received during the years of her decline, I have dedicated myself to working with Meals on Wheels, and these commitments prevent me from participating in other charitable activities, no matter how worthy.”
and
“To express my gratitude for the support I received in college, I have decided to focus my efforts on raising money for scholarships for underprivileged youth, and these commitments prevent me from participating in other charitable activities, no matter how worthy.”
I have no problem at all with someone who has to come up with a way to manage all the requests received from very laudable causes.
Except we don’t know why he refused. You just made up a reason that, if true, would indeed make him an asshole. But we don’t know that so we can’t just assume he is one.
Meh. I’ve been called a jerk over less noble causes than defending the point of view of terminally ill kids. 
I know very well that pro athletes aren’t heroes…but most kids are not as cynical as you and I are. Society encourages them to engage in hero worship. Back when I was a kid, “Be Like Mike” was all over the media and I imagine that this generation of kids hears similar things abouts its crop of heroes too.
As Marley23 points out, the athletes rely on their fans for a large part of their income.
Roethlisberger in particular has made millions of dollars hawking products based on his public persona. He has benefited from cultivating the perception he is someone you should want to emulate and desire to be around. He wouldn’t make a dime off the BBQ sauce with his name on it or the “Mrs. Roethlisberger” jerseys his site sells if the rest of the public saw him as just some idiot who happens to be able to throw a ball.
Choosing a career in the public eye comes with baggage. If you can’t handle the pressures of having fans and being in the spotlight, stick to playing ball on the weekends and get a job where nobody EXPECTS you to care about your dying fans.
If anybody is so inundated with wishes that they can no longer eat, sleep, or live their lives, then yes, I have no objection to their prioritizing. (I’m sure this happens all the time. Wikipedia reports that John Cena has granted 100 wishes while continuing to do what he does as a wrestler, and others have granted plenty. But most famous people will never have to do it at all and I doubt there are that many people who get that kind of volume.)
Yeah, again, I don’t see this as the gateway charity. Unlike most other charities, there’s really no other commitment here. You can’t build a house in an hour. You can, however, hang out with an ailing child who has specifically requested time with you.
I was not attributing that reason to Roethlisberger, just building off of what Boyo Jim said. I’m not assuming Roethlisberger is an asshole, and I’m not even accepting the “he doesn’t do Make A Wish” story at face value.
I don’t think it’s jerkish or assholish. Ben Roethlisberger only has to do one thing: Win Football games. If he doesn’t want to be part of a charity, he doesn’t have to.
I disagree.
How much pressure would you feel if you heard that someone’s dying wish was to hang out with you? What if you say something wrong that destroys the kid’s image of you. Maybe the kid will cry for the rest of his short life because he blew his one wish on seeing you and found out, unfortunately, that you’re just a regular human like everyone else? What if you accidentally make a joke that is the absolutely most offensive thing in the world to that one kid? What if, in your opinion, you believed that your visiting this kid would do him more harm than good?
Some, I admit. But the wish granting people are already playing with house money: if a kid makes a wish to meet them and they show up, the kids know they care enough to be there to make them happy, and that makes all the difference. Kids are sometimes not that hard to please, and these are children and families who’ve had all the misery they can handle for months or years.
I’d need to get over myself and think of what it would mean to someone else. While this is a more serious situation, celebrities are used to dealing with the public and preserving an image.