Mayor Proposes Charity Concert To Raise Money For Cash-Strapped City

Remember how well Live 8 went off? I mean, I don’t know if it achieved whatever it was supposed to achieve. Actually, I don’t remember what it was supposed to achieve. Dropping the debt? Helping feed African children? Making people wear white wristbands for a week or two? Hmm. I think it was about awareness, maybe. And, boy, am I ever aware of Africa!

Anyway: Live 8 in Philadelphia went off very well. The concert was (amazingly) pretty enjoyable, there weren’t any huge riots where people destroyed everything around them, etc. But, really, should we push our luck with another huge concert idea?

The mayor thinks so. In fact, today he said talk is underway for a FarmAid-style concert to raise money for the city! Catherine Lucey calls it “PhilAid,” and I don’t think we’re going to do any better than that. Somebody register philaid.org, quick! Crap, too late!

“I was in a conversation where it was suggested that there are tons of stars, some from Philly, some might come to Philadelphia,” Nutter said today. “It entails a whole lot of work and effort and is not necessarily something you can build a budget around. Whatever you would generate would be a onetime thing.”

I guess if this is supposed to raise money, it can’t be out on the Parkway. So, ah… the Linc and its horrible sound? Or maybe they could charge a ton for tickets and hold it at the Kimmel Center? Or how about the Robin Hood Dell East, that concert hall the newspapers are always writing about!

Mayor Nutter says the discussions are very, very preliminary (read: it’s not going to happen). That’s probably a good thing, because you know they’d organize this thing and then it’d eventually lose money.

Could a PhilAid concert come our way? [Clout]

Photo by Lucius Kwok used under a Creative Commons license

Right on, ‘Time’

Let me begin this morning with the seemingly strange choice for Time’s Persons of the Year. (I always hate the word “Persons.” Wouldn’t “People” be better? Or would that be bad because there’s a magazine called People? Wait, where am I?)

Okay, back to the point: Time’s Persons of the Year are Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono. At first, I simply thought: Well, obviously Bill Gates and his wife are always a good choice, since they plan on giving all their money away. (See, sometimes Microsoft isn’t quite the most evil corporation on the planet.) And, you know, Bono is always cool. But were they the people who influenced the news the most?

I thought about it some more, though, and I think I figured it out. Bill & Melinda: Okay, it’s going to give more publicity to their causes, so I’m down. Plus, hey, it’s nice to see the nerds continue to get revenge.

And Bono? Well, Bono helped put on Live 8. Even though he wasn’t at the Philadelphia concert, remember what happened there? There was a big event in Philly with hundreds of thousands of people and everything pretty much went off without a hitch. In Philadelphia! We can barely put on, say, a Christmas tree lighting ceremony without everyone embarassing themselves. Helping do something like a successful event in Philly doesn’t just deserve Time’s Person of the Year, it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

Time names Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates Persons of Year [CNN.com]