Producer May Be Seeking to Politicize Hurricane Relief Telethon

With the complicity of six major television networks, producer Joel Gallen is setting up what has the potential to be a Bush-bashing party Friday night. Though Gallen claims he doesn't want to politicize the event, the inclusion of retardate rapper (sorry for the redundancy) Kanye West and the politically naive Dixie Chicks tells a different story. From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - The producer of Friday's one-hour telethon to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims said no special precautions will be taken to edit out political statements — even though rapper Kanye West is on the bill.

Why would a producer would want an ignorant and unstable celebrity appearing on a benefit show if not to "accidentally" blurt out something controversial?

But Joel Gallen, executive producer of "Shelter From the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast," also doesn't expect any problems.

Neither did NBC, Joel, yet Kanye felt compelled to create one anyway.

West, on last week's hurricane relief concert shown on NBC, departed from a prepared script to say that " George Bush doesn't care about black people." He's one of a dozen musicians scheduled to perform Friday.

Based on his actions, I'd have to say that Kanye West doesn't care about black people, unless they're buying his music, of course. If he did care, he'd have stuck to the script to maximize donations rather than offending a large portion of the audience to indulge his paranoid stupidity.

Only a standard five- or seven-second delay will be employed to guard against any obscenities, Gallen said. He said he's spoken to all of the musicians and actors who will be appearing on the show about not detracting from the mission.

Yes, I'm sure the gigantic, self-absorbed egos involved are going to play nice.

"I think people understand that politicizing this will certainly not be a smart thing to do as far as inspiring people to call in and rally around this cause," he said.

A reasonable statement, if applied to normal humans rather than emotional and intellectual cripples like West and the Dixie Chicks. Which raises the question: Joel, if you didn't want it to get political, why did you invite folks like these to participate?