Some jerk who doesn’t care about poor people.

Look, I have no idea why he decided that THIS was going to be the thing he decided to speak up on, thus probably ruining his career forever, but he makes some completely valid points. And some pretty dumb ones. The valid ones I speak of are related to the “unconditional giving”, and the rebuilding-without-plan-for-future-prevention-of-the-same-thing kind of points. Imagine a scenario where New Orleans is hit by another storm in 5 years and endures very similar flooding and destruction. This is completely possible. Is the rest of the world going to be as supportive as it was the first time? It certainly won’t and I’m not sure it should be.

The fact is that we are a giving people, for one reason or another. We want to feel good about ourselves, mostly. People donate all this money on American Idol Gives Back every year, and hey, we can write it off on our taxes, too! It’s amazing that we were able to raise so much for Haiti (and the tsunami before it, New Orleans before it, and NYC before that) and these places certainly needed it right at that moment. I have no idea why Mr. Shirley dedicated so many words to this subject, but I don’t think it should all be brushed under the bed without a second thought. Shouldn’t have written it though. Perhaps he was drunk?

Also, I’ve read Paul’s stuff on ESPN for the last few years and it’s often pretty entertaining. For an athlete, he’s a pretty good writer. Whatever that even means.