Every Party has a Pooper

I hate to be a wet blanket, a spoiler or a stick in the mud, but spending a million dollars on a party to celebrate anything is ridiculous. To spend a million on a mate that has survived cancer is egregious.

I was watching a piece on CBS Sunday Morning. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed a slide in the quality of articles. More and more they’re letting the, what I call, Vanity Fair article sneak in. This is the kind of article that is celebrity based or informs us about the rich and famous. Now I know that there is a certain amount of the audience that likes these stories, but I don’t and that is why I watch CBS Sunday Morning and skip The Today show and all of the other’s that represent that branch of journalism. I’m just not interested in the news of the romances, breakups and fashion decisions of the American form of royalty.

The article on that Sunday morning, New Years Eve 2006, was about parties. They interviewed the “in party planners” and covered the gamut in bizarre presentation, food and venues that people will buy in order to top their neighbors. These included extremes in size of guest list, top name performers to entertain and exotic locations. The excess was unbelievable to me. I still swallow hard when my dinner check comes to over one hundred dollars.

But one of the featured parties really kicked my middle class values hard in the ass. One of the parties was organized and paid for by this rather pleasant woman from North or South Carolina to celebrate her husband survival from a bout of cancer. She admitted that you have to spend in the area of seven figures to get what they did. Included was some kind of a rare sports car that her husband always wanted. I was shocked and incredulous.

Let’s celebrate yes, but over a million dollars for a guy who owes his life to doctors and medical practitioners who have spent their lives learning how to help people afflicted with these terrible diseases. He owes much to all of the patients who died in experimental programs that eventually led to the successful methods we now use.

And what about the future? Tell me I am wrong, but spending a million dollars plus on a party to celebrate a guy surviving cancer is saying “I am rich. Let me show you how rich I am and I dare you to try and out do me.” As opposed someone who will give the money to cancer research and quietly, without puffing out their chest say thank you and take this to help someone else, but than maybe I’m just a party pooper.