how not to garner sympathy

i just flicked on the telly, and came face to face with a charity informercial aimed to help children in third world countries. i'm always sympathetic towards these, but my sympathy is overturned by my laziness in doing the research in finding the most effective charity to donate to (the image of an ever-expanding sally struthers begging for more food irks me to this day).

anyway, i'm watching one for the christian children's fund (or something like that) where a man with a santa claus beard walks through some third world country, introducing us to the sad stories of the underprivileged.

and he puts his hand on the shoulder of one little girl and says, AND I QUOTE, "this is isabela. she lived in a cardboard hut at the edge of a cliff. one day, there was a terrible storm and it was blown away."



okay, so from this point on to the end of the commercial, i'm completely tuned out because i need to rectify this in my head:

1. who in their right mind would build a cardboard hut at THE EDGE OF A CLIFF? visualize that. these people are poor, not stupid. and if it were true, should we reward stupidity?

2. it's not stupidity. do you think you can build a cardboard hut? i'm not sure i could. i have trouble building baseball card houses. so i'm to think if they had enough sense to build a cardboard hut, they had enough not to set it at THE EDGE OF A CLIFF.

3. what type of cardboard did they use to build the hut? i'm sure it was corrogated materials. do they have corrogated materials in a third-world country? was it taped together? or was it just a TV box that our homeless lives in?

4. let's presume that they did live at THE EDGE OF A CLIFF. why? was the view that amazing? did their cardboard hut have windows? did the beauty of the scene counteract the thought that your cardboard house might flutter away?

by the time my head was fully wrapped around that this santa claus character was indeed a bullshit artist, the commercial had ended and i have no idea who to send any charity to.

my point: bullshit from santa doesn't pay off.

need more struthers.