Shitholier Than Thou

If you're like me, you heard about some earthquake thing happening in Haiti in a smart-person way, like listening to NPR. Or it could have been while I was watching some reality show on FOX with my beer gut resting comfortably in my lap. (Purely for quiz research, people.) When a shithole country has a tragedy, it's an American tradition to send a few bucks to the Red Cross or somesuch. Then you don't have to think about it anymore. Besides, what better way to demonstrate your superiority to someone than to insult them with charity.

Of course, Haiti was a shithole before the earthquake, which is all your fault for not voting for me when I ran for president. I didn't have to send any money to Haiti before the earthquake because I expressed my outrage by shouting at the TV and rolling my eyes a few times. I also wrote a couple of bilious rants about how Haiti was ruined by James K. Polk when he pulled the baseball industry out and ruined their economy. At 9,000 words each, with facts ripped straight from Wikipedia, Haiti now owes me money.

There were other earthquakes, hurricanes, and genocides, but those aren't worth my time or outrage. Hurricane Katrina happened to Louisiana, so I already paid for that with my tax money for all those poor people who mooch off me. The earthquakes in Chile and Japan didn't kill nearly enough people to be interesting. Haiti itself was pummeled by storms only two years ago, killing 3,000 and leaving 800,000 homeless and starving, but I was busy writing a 17,000-word piece on how Barack Obama isn't really black. Had I known about it, I would have dipped into my beer budget for at least four dollars.

Another plus to the whole charity thing is it not only makes you superior to the Haitians, but to all your friends. The only real point to being large is being larger than someone else. So chunk a few cents in a jar today, crack open a cold one, settle down in front of "Flavor of Love" re-runs, and bask in your smugness.

UPDATE: Japan is now interesting enough to write a 4-million word anti-nuke piece about. Just remember to throw in a link to the Red Cross so you don't look like a dick.