2010-09-20

Make-A-Wish

I was watching an old episode of Celebrity Apprentice wherein Holly Robinson Peete is working with a kid from the Make-A-Wish foundation. As adults are wont to do, she asked him the standard "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question. To the kid's credit, while his face read "Idiot, I have a terminal disease," he only said, "I haven't thought of that yet." I hope it wasn't his wish to meet a quasi-celebrity!

Subsequent research about Make-A-Wish taught me that the child doesn't necessarily have to be dying to receive a wish, suffering from a light-threatening illness is sufficient. I think Make-A-Wish's policy is a good one; can you imagine a cancer-stricken kid who miraculously survives only to find himself obligated to pay for his day of fishing with Tom Brady?

So maybe Ms. Peete's career question was not as inappropriate as I initially believed. My research also led me to learn that there is an even bigger misconception about Make-A-Wish: it's going bankrupt. Evidently, people don't understand satire to the extent that Snopes had to refute rumors started by this hilarious Onion video:



Is it too much to wish for a less gullible society?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The latest headline, Make-A-Wish murders child to avoid pending bankruptcy. Can you believe it? :-0