The Year of Charitainment

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There are plenty of reasons for celebrities to do charity: guilt, faith, personal suffering, ratings, p.r. "If you want a long-term career and you want to be taken seriously by the public, to do nothing is a mistake," says publicist to the stars Ken Sunshine. "Charitable work rounds out and humanizes your image." And then there's politics. It's probably not a coincidence that some of the most charitably active celebrities are also some of the more outspoken liberals--Sean Penn, George Clooney. Many celebrities have found that working on international causes (say, civil liberties or poverty overseas) is a way to indulge a more palatable, little-l liberalism at a safe remove from controversial issues at home (say, civil liberties under the Patriot Act or poverty in Newark, N.J.).

But 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 of wings out of newspaper and fly off the roof of your garage.

More interesting than why celebrities take up causes--and tougher to answer--is why the rest of us pay attention to them. Granted, there is the rare celeb, like Bono, who becomes a bona fide expert, but why should I turn to him for advice on solving poverty any more than I'd buy a ticket to watch global-poverty guru Jeffrey Sachs sing I Will Follow? Maybe stars can draw on a reservoir of trust, but that trust can be volatile. In 1985 Michael Jackson was a beloved humanitarian. Today, hearing him sing "We are the world/We are the children" is not so touching. Not in a good way anyway.

Americans, I suspect, like to see celebrities do charity because of our paradoxical expectations of them. We want them to be glamorous and live fantastic lives, and yet we also want them to be, in the words of Us magazine, "just like us!" But if they're just like us, why should they have so much more than we do? There may be a sense that celebrities need to atone, if not for their sins, then for those of their industry. At the Witness benefit, former child soldier Ishmael Beah talked about his experience as a conscript in Sierra Leone's civil war. To keep the troops, as young as 7 years old, hopped up for battle, their officers gave them intoxicants--marijuana, cocaine and, he says, "war movies, like Rambo: First Blood Part II."

And let's face it, while guilt may impel some celebrities to volunteer, guilt is a two-way street. We're the ones who buy the tickets and watch Entertainment Tonight. When I read in PEOPLE magazine about Jessica Simpson jetting to Africa to help kids with facial deformities ("They were in awe of the blond hair," she reported), sure, I laughed. She conveniently happened to turn from Daisy Duke into Florence Nightingale just as her impending split from husband Nick Lachey was dribbling into the tabloids. But then again, what was I doing to improve the lives of needy children in Africa? Reading PEOPLE magazine?