Karen Klein.
Wow. What a story. I am often interested in current events and so I follow the news in an off-hand lazy way. I’m too busy to read lots of articles or get behind every movement. But I read headlines. I follow the trends. I like politics. I like economics and design but don’t follow modern design like I would if I had 10 more hours in a day, ha.
Back to Karen. It’s a big story. Big like the balloon boy story. I followed that story in a weird way. I never see TV, to the tune of one or two shows a year plus every gator game… and I happened to see the Keene’s on wife swap by a bizarre turn of events. Then by another unbelievable twist I witnessed the breaking news of the balloon boy on live TV.
I followed the Susan Boyle story loosely. I was mesmerized too by her audition.
But now it’s Karen. I love this story more than all the rest. Because it’s indiegogo and it’s so awesome.
I saw the video a day or two ago. I did not watch it. I saw it on indiegogo and I did. I checked 4 or 5 times during the video how much time was left. I couldn’t take it. before it was over I decided it must be a hoax. I thought for a minute that the kids were so tight with this woman that they made a deal with her to make this video and then start the donation site and split the money as a prank. I briefly convinced myself that this is the story here.
Now I’ve watched video of the aftermath. I’ve read the comments from the stories. I even copied a few things from the comments below. Why? because I love this story.
I have a pizza joint. We had an unfortunate fire and raised $37,000 on indiegogo to help the employees who would be out of work. It was the most amazing show of love and support I have ever actually witnessed first hand from a community of like-minded individuals. It repairs my belief in people. It expands my understanding of human compassion. It somehow fights fire with fire. It somehow takes a bad thing and makes it good. It is a caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis… it is the good outweighing the bad for a change.
Below are the comments from people on the Washington post coverage. These are just a few I copied that stuck out to me. I love this sort of human complexity followed by the counterweight of human compassion. It is a terrible beautiful world.
Candice Nicole
You NEVER lose when you give
HondurasPCV
3:46 PM EDT
Paul’s question is valid, and it’s one that I share. So the decision of an admirable elderly woman to take the high road in the face of shameless verbal abuse spewed upon her by a group of middle-schoolers is [currently] valued at $300,000? And now the creator of this fundraiser, Max Sidorov, is benefiting from a similar fund created for him by someone else– to funnel [financial] appreciation his way for starting Karen’s fundraiser (currently a paltry $2,000 in comparison to Karen’s sizable nest egg). Will someone then start a fund for the guy who started a fund for Max to show him [financial] appreciation?
I love Karen’s story, by the way, and I genuinely hope she enjoys every penny of the donations she receives. But IT IS a peculiar occurrence to see one woman’s act of humility/suffering/bullying assigned a monetary value by society, regardless of whether or not you think she “deserves” the donations coming her way.
Andrew B
3:47 PM EDT
Paul – You just dont get it. People aren’t “giving money”, they’re giving support. Money is just the means in which the support is being provided. And the exceeding level of funds raised for Ms Klein should lead you to understand the way that video made people feel. I donated regardless of the fact that the funds were exceeding the goal by $195k, not because I want to see her go on a more extravagant vacation, but because I wanted to lend my support to her. Money is not going to erase the pain she endured, nor will any vacation that she can possibly take, but the thought of thousands of strangers making the least bit of effort just to know that they’re thinking about her could possibly put a smile on her face. And that is worth any donation to me.
itsbettertogivethenreceive
7:31 PM EDT
Yeah it’s a bad thing thousands of Americans came together to donate $20 or so each to a bullied elderly lady. Yeah that is throwing money away, yet billionaires like the Koch brothers spending 400 million to buy elections is no cause for concern or throwing it away.
Plus did you ever think that maybe just maybe some people who don’t have much rather skip a night out and give what little extra money they have to someone who was wronged because they felt bad for them and felt they deserved a nice vacation. I just wish we all were this kind all the time and took up causes everyday.
Satchel Raye says (not in any forum other than this post):
My heart is bruised when I watch a video like this. I wonder how anyone could be so insensitive as to not see other humans as reflections of themselves. I don’t want to believe one person could ever be unkind to another. Thanks to folks who give when their heart tells them to give. Thanks to a world where a fund can somehow counterbalance an injustice. I like it.
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