cringe-worthy

I guess no one wants to look like a schlub when they're on tv all the time and such, but $150,000 for hair and makeup and new clothes? I made fun of John Edwards' $400 haircut but this is just so far beyond that, I just don't even know what to say. I can't conceive that amount of money.

And this just gets me.



This reminds me of the time a couple years ago when one of my elderly relatives offered my parents a pretty decent chunk of change to take me and my sisters out on a "shopping spree" because we've helped him out with a lot of things. We're talking a couple thousand for each of us, chump change evidently for those of us who are running for office.

We turned him down on it, however, because it just didn't feel RIGHT. It seemed like an overwhelming amount of cash to spend on yourself when there were so many people who need it more. Besides, I wondered what the heck I would spend it on anyway, considering that most of my clothes come from either the thrift store racks or the cheaper stores.

But back to the $150k. That's about 5 times what I make in a year. That's more than what my parents' house is worth. That could send how many kids to college? Feed how many hungry people? Provide micro-loans to how many entrepreneurs in a third world country?

I think of people who are really down and out, not just in dire straits around the world, but here in our own country, like the father of some of the kids I help teach English to on Saturdays who fled civil war in Burundi to come here only to get paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a car. Not only is he unable to start a new life for himself the way he'd want to, unable to support his wife and kids on his own, but he's also got huge hospital bills that they can't pay. We've helped them out as much as we can, but there's just so much.





And that's just one situation. There are so many.