An Open Letter To Stuart Cornfeld

As we near the collective celebrity effort taking place on television this Friday night to raise money to help Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake (a cause with which Ben Stiller, your Red Hour partner, has a very special association), there is no confusing compassion for Haiti with concerns of a partisan nature. And it is good to see people coming together this way for so worthy and so nonpartisan a reason. (By the way, is insisting upon universal healthcare in the U.S. a partisan cause? I guess so, if people calling themselves a political party attack it as such. Let’s just be seen as nonpartisan and stick with the Haiti matter. It could even provide the pass that excuses us from being asked to weigh in on that partisan issue.)

When disasters like the earthquake in Haiti occur, we often hear what now borders on cliché: that so many other endeavors pale in comparison with the seriousness of addressing such a cause.

It would be impossible to deny the seriousness of this matter, or that reacting to it correctly requires a sense of its urgency. However, it is precisely at such times as this that I find myself acutely aware of an important principle that one continually sees being immediately and publicly discarded, as though in doing so one shows oneself to possess a highly profound sense of humanity and compassion. I refer to the implication that causes of this plain and material a nature must necessarily diminish, by comparison, the realness of purpose and meaning behind what entertainment/art/culture should be about in general (aside from soliciting help for Haiti from the public), and the potential power of creative inspiration itself to comparably act upon matters of consequence in a significantly material way.

A simple-minded person, not unlike a non-thinking animal, may not be aware of the value/impact, in terms of there being consequences of a genuine, actual, material nature, connected with the human facility for digesting/internalizing/spiritualizing/crystallizing, a facility towards which entertainment/art/culture is designed to contribute. In fact, it may even be said that the world has reached a place where the potential contribution towards this human facility that comes from entertainment/art/culture could easily be without parallel. Furthermore, increasingly, the role of entertainment/art/culture has become that of being an important part of the foundation of the larger societal community to which we all belong. To put it in a blunt nutshell, that which human beings frame/filter through their artistic sensibility can move, build or destroy mountains. I do not mean this in the purely poetic sense, but somewhat literally.

I feel there is a certain need for some kind of reaction against this false assumption that there is a comparative lack of realness involved with the consequences of creative inspiration.

Unfortunately, I believe I may be speaking more on behalf of the potential of creative inspiration, as opposed to that which has actually succeeded in overcoming the barricades of shortsighted, commercially-minded concerns. As a case in point, I cannot believe that the majority of the voters in Massachusetts on Tuesday would have acted as they did, in destroying the chances of universal healthcare in the U.S., if true creative inspiration had reached its target in their souls. I understand how support of universal healthcare has come to appear partisan, and am beginning to feel myself out on a limb for not confining my remarks to support for the Haitian relief effort. I hope they raise all of the money needed.