Where's My New House?

I was watching Extreme Home Makeover last night like I normally do on Sunday evening. My wife, being an interior designer, loves to see what they do to the homes. We’ve even gotten my mother into watching it, much to my stepfather’s dismay. Once you get past the cheesiness of Ty Pennington and his crew, the show isn’t half bad. I am quite sure that none of them spend as much time on the construction site as the network would like us to believe though. Most likely scenario is that they shoot their little construction scenes and then go hang out in the air conditioned trailers while the grunts do the actual work.
Some of the rooms they do for the kids on the show are really cool even if they are a bit non-functional. Last night they built a kid a room that looked like the deck of a pirate ship. Pretty cool but if the kid is anything like I was as a kid he’ll grow out of his pirate phase in a few months and be stuck with a room that everyone but him thinks is cool. But hey, at least he’ll have a new flat screen TV to watch in his pirate room. Every room they make gets a new flat screen.
The stories are always touching, too. Last night the focus was on a little boy named Job who had leukemia as a child which led to numerous other health issues. Because of the focus on the child, the family home became a bit run down and dilapidated and was deemed uninhabitable. The house was overrun with mold, making it impossible for Job to stay there due to the double lung transplant he had received. The community stepped up and were paying for the family to live in a rental property.
Speaking of the community, the EHM crew went to the local hospital where Job went through his treatments and surgeries. They shot a little video in which the other children with other vicious medical afflictions said a little bit. They even had Job’s older sister’s favorite Christian singer sing a song live from the hospital All of this was shown via webcam to the family who had been sent away on vacation while the work on their house was completed.
This is about the point where the heartless republican in me came to life. As I was watching all the other kids with life-threatening illnesses tell their stories and reminisce about Job’s time in the hospital with them, I couldn’t help wonder how they felt about all of this. How do you tell a kid going through a horrible illness that another kid with a horrible illness is more deserving of the world’s philanthropy? All I could think of while watching it was the kids asking their parents if they were getting a new house, too. Can the parents explain it to the kid? Honestly, why should they even have to?
Maybe ABC should rethink the idea of announcing their plans to the world, especially when it comes to children with life threatening diseases. When they build a house that is in many ways exclusive to a child who is by all means special but in no way alone in his plight, they are sending a message of hope to children who may not have any. It is heartbreaking to think of kids who have yet to experience life but are already dealing with their own mortality. Job’s story was touching but I would be willing to bet that each and every one of the other kids in that hospital or in hospitals around the country have touching stories too.
I think it is commendable when ABC builds a new community center for a family that takes in foster children or kids who have been victims of various kinds of abuse. Those kind of things help many more people while excluding fewer. What ABC should try to avoid doing though is sending the message that one child’s life is more important than another’s, which is what I think they have done on more than one occasion. As much as I hate to say it, if you can’t help everybody, you shouldn’t help anybody.