Wow. Michael Jordan is going to donate $5 million dollars to aid teachers. He wants the money to “focus on giving kids an opportunity to excel and to achieve their dreams”. The program is called “Jordan Fundamentals”. Teachers can receive up to $2,500 in grants.
Can you believe the class and generosity of this guy! What a personal sacrifice! He saw a need, and just reached into his pocket and wrote a check!
Ooo. Wait! It looks the money will come from the proceeds of the “Nike Sporting goods Jordan brand”. Huh? The richest Athlete in the world doesn’t have a check book?
In other words, this is a marketing ploy. We are going to see ads asking you to contribute to the Michael Jordan Nike Jordan Fundamentals Program to help children excel and achieve their dreams. Yeah. And one of their dreams might be to become so rich and greedy and self-centred that you can have your accountants and lawyers create phony charities to raise money on behalf of your good name without having to sacrifice a penny of your own real wealth. You can drive around in your limo with your bodyguards and jewelry and pretend that all those suckers who pay $150 a ticket to watch you play basketball are investing their money in virtue and goodness.
Jason Kamros, a math teacher in Washington D.C., says “Yipeee!” You see Kamros had been spending up to $1,000 of his own money to use photography to help teach math to this grade sixers. He’s going to apply for some of Jordan’s “largesse”.
That $1,000 probably represents about 1/20th of Kamros’ annual take-home salary. Jordan’s $5 million potentially represents about 1/20th of his annual income, except for the fact that Jordan isn’t actually going to contribute a penny of his personal income. He’s going to contribute his name, which cost him nothing, last I heard. YOU are going to contribute the $5 million dollars by buying Nike Shoes. And your purchase of Nike-Jordan Shoes helps keep children in Indonesia employed in sweat shops at 15 cents an hour. And how much you wanna bet that Nike isn’t getting a cut as well?
It is one thing to demand a monumental pile of money to play basketball and then pretend not to be greedy. It is one thing to pretend to be generous and self-sacrificing when you are not. But surely it crosses all boundaries of decency to take money from your fans, give it to a charity, and then call the media’s attention to your “generosity”.
If I were Jason Kamros, I’d tell Jordan where to stuff it.