Compare and Contrast, Charity Edition
Tuesday night, Jermaine O'Neal of the Indiana Pacers, desperate for some image resuscitation after slugging a fan in the big brawl in Detroit, pledged to donate $1,000 for every point he scored to tsunami relief efforts. He scored 32, but after the game bumped his contribution to $55,000, to match his season high of 55 pts.
Never a group to let PR opportunities pass, several other NBA players repeated O'Neal's $1,000 pledge last night. Tracy McGrady, Kobe Bryant, Bob Sura, Paul Gasol, Mike Miller and Jalen Rose each pledged $1,000. Bryant topped the scoring list with 27 points. Jalen Rose scored 21, but bumped his contribution to $44,000, to match his career high. To the best of my knowledge none of them have bumped up their contributions (if I'm wrong, or that changes, post a link in the comments). The NBA and the NBA Player's Association are each kicking in $500,000.
In another sport, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are also donating a combined $1,000,000. The Yankees as an organization are donating $1,000,000 from the proceeds of their opening day game.
Hideki Matsui, one player on the Yankees, has donated $480,000, by himself. Quoting from the ESPN article:
Outfielder Hideki Matsui donated $480,000 to Fumio Hirata, head of the local chapter of the Japanese Red Cross Society and mayor of Neagari -- Matsui's hometown.
"Watching the news every day, I thought that this must be the worst disaster in history. I'd like to do what little I can to help," Hirata said Matsui told him.
The current athletic charity champion is Michael Schumacher, the Formula 1 driver, who's ponying up $10 million (out of an estimated income of $80 million-- who knew?).
The standard excuse for the US's piss-poor foreign aid contributions is that we make up for the lack of government funds through generous private charitable contributions. We report, you decide.
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