Following on the heels of raising almost $10 million for Haiti relief earlier this year, tonight’s telethon – billed as a “two-screen event” for both TV and digital interfaces (computers, Blackberries etc. — though I guess that’s three screens at this point) — will feature an impressive array of stars, including Kathy Griffin, Alyssa Milano, Ke$ha, Nicole Richie, Pete Wentz, Ivanka Trump, Chelsea Handler and…JUSTIN BIEBER. Just pause to imagine all the tween purchasing power, at the ready. $10 million? Feh. Think opening night of “Twilight: Eclipse.” (And yes I am now going to tag this post with “Justin Bieber” and “Twilight: Eclipse.”

More to the point: CNN deserves some big kudos for the big, splashy philanthropic programming they do for charity. From CNN Heroes to King’s last telethon to tonight’s big event, this is CNN using the power of their name and their reach to do good. It’s too bad that on the very same day, the ratings — and the drama — are the story.

Here’s a bit more on CNN’s philanthropic and social media efforts, as per CNN Audience Interaction Producer Eric Kuhn, whom I interviewed earlier today at MakeWorkMeaningful.com:

You’re in LA right now, prepping for Larry King’s special two-hour telethon tonight to benefit the Gulf. Tell me a bit about how that project, and the social elements that CNN has brought into it.

Larry King did a similar event a few months ago for Haiti that was a big success and raised $10 million. We also created a hash tag (#CNNHelpHaiti) for the telethon that within 45 minutes became a top trending topic. What we have tried to do during Haiti (and what we will do tonight) is make the broadcast a two-screen experience where you watch CNN TV with your laptop or mobile device. Tonight if you include the hashtag #CNNHelpGulf in your tweets about the Gulf or Larry King Live, celebrities in the “Social Suite,” including Ryan Seacrest, Kathy Griffin, Alyssa Milano, Chelsea Handler and Pete Wentz, will respond to tell you how to help. Facebook is also participating, using their Disaster Relief Page to post celebrity questions and information about the telethon and how you can help. Finally, the location-based social network Gowalla has done something really awesome, where if you “check-in” at a “Parks and Nature” spot, you will receive an official “Larry King Live: How You Can Help” Pin for your Gowalla Passport, as well as a tip on how to help in the Gulf. I believe that by staying connected, we can all make a difference.

and

CNN has really been a leader in supporting causes for social good – CNN Heroes, they were a big part of the “Hope for Haiti” telethon, and, earlier this year when I asked, they sponsored Twestival. Tonight’s telethon is another example of this. How much do ‘social good’ factors play into what you do at CNN?

The concept of “social good” is something that really feels like it’s in CNN’s DNA – from the amazing team at CNN Impact Your World to our staff who produces CNN Heroes to the folks that jumped on Hope for Haiti and tonight’s event, I feel fortunate to work with such giving, caring individuals. Earlier this month, CNN created a program called CNN’s Give 30 for 30, completely conceived by CNN employees and embraced by Turner Broadcasting. Basically, in honor of CNN’s 30th birthday, every eligible Turner employee has the opportunity to direct a company-paid donation of $30 to a charitable organization of his or her choice. To me, that’s a humbling move.

A strong charitable bent both inside the organization as well as the face put forth to the world — that’s a pretty good legacy for 30 years, whatever the ratings. Though hopefully those will move up the thermometer like so many Bieber-inspired dollars on a telethon thermometer, so that this kind of good work can continue in to the future. So don’t screw it up this time, Eliot Spitzer!

Why We’re Doing “How You Can Help” [CNN]
Monday’s Telethon: A Two-Screen Experience [CNN]

The video spoofs Dove’s “Evolution” video which shows how a regular woman gets transformed into a supermodel with makeup, hair, retouching and computer imaging. Milano’s transformation is no less dramatic. The video’s great on its own but knowing about the Dove vid helps (which is probably why the Dove video was loaded up on Funny or Die about an hour before the Milano vid.) But I love how Milano manages to make a statement about beauty herself, sitting with her 37 year old punum naked under the lights and looking fabulous, thankyouverymuch! Once again, Collette Burson, you know where to go.

Both videos, for your reference, are below.

Video Credits:
Starring Alyssa Milano, written by Seth Morris, directed by Dustin Bowser, DP: Christian Sprenger, Producer: Mike Farah, Makeup: Shauna O’Toole, Hair: Kat Bardot

On July 4, 2009, I lost my brother and my only sibling Eric Alexander De La Cruz. He passed away while awaiting a heart transplant. Five years ago, he was diagnosed with severe dilated cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart that prevents it from pumping normally. Since then, we had tried to get Eric insurance coverage that would allow him to get the treatment he needed, but no private insurer would offer him insurance because of this preexisting condition.

Medical bills have bankrupted our family. My mother even shared her own heart medication with Eric when he couldn’t afford it.

My brother and I grew up in Northern California and, though we were a couple years apart, we were always very close. As kids, we spent all our time on the ice at the local rink. Eric played hockey, while I trained as a figure skater.

As adults, we remained best friends, talking and joking on the phone or over e-mail. We loved trading music and would always keep each other up to date on what was happening in the world of hockey or figure skating. Eric loved the Ducks, and it would crush him if they didn’t win. He was a talented artist, music producer, and designer. Most of all, my brother Eric made me see that there is more to life than work.

When Eric’s heart condition was diagnosed, our lives changed forever. This past May, his kidneys began to fail and doctors told me only a heart transplant would save his life. Since he was young and otherwise healthy, I thought our chances were excellent.

But Eric did not have the luxury of insurance coverage provided through his employer. His only insurer, state Medicaid, wouldn’t cover the out-of-state operation Eric needed. He was denied federal Medicare — twice.

Eventually, when we finally did get federal coverage for Eric, the hospital still demanded private supplemental insurance to help cover the huge expenses. Again, Eric’s preexisting condition became a factor in trying to secure that supplemental policy. We were told we might still have to come up with nearly a million dollars.

Medical bills have bankrupted our family. My mother even shared her own heart medication with Eric when he couldn’t afford it. With Eric’s health deteriorating, and feeling desperate, I began relying on the kindness of strangers.

In May, I started talking about Eric on the social media network Twitter. To my amazement, complete strangers started to come together in support. Within a week, hundreds of donors had raised $6,000 and Eric’s cause was being promoted by celebrities like Demi Moore, Alyssa Milano and P. Diddy. Those willing to champion Eric’s fight for his life soon numbered in the thousands. Popular bands Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction, as well as professional skateboarder Tony Hawk, helped put fundraising into overdrive. Altogether, “Eric’s Twitter Army” raised nearly $1 million in a matter of weeks.

In June, Eric was moved to a California hospital, where he was put at the top of the heart transplant list. It was a happy time for us and we were busy planning for the future. We were looking forward to doing normal things together, like walking his dog Chance and finally getting on the ice again. And every day, I took time to assure him that everything was going to be okay.

But sadly enough, doctors informed me the fight would be hard. In fact, they pulled me aside to say, “You guys got here two years too late.” They explained that Eric’s battle for a heart should have started two years earlier — back when we were trying to secure insurance coverage and one by one each insurance company was saying no. The day my brother passed away I promised him I would do two things: take care of Mom and his dog, and try my hardest to change the health care system. I sat by his bedside crying, promising that I would do everything within my own power to make sure that no one suffered again needlessly, the way he did.

Still deeply mourning my brother, I’ve been trying to fulfill those promises. In August, I flew to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress for health care reform, arguing that coverage must be available to all, even to those with preexisting conditions, and that insurance companies must be prohibited from dropping sick patients.

At private meetings with lawmakers, I detailed every painful step of Eric’s battle. It was emotionally draining, but I wanted every single member of Congress to hear his story. I’m also starting a foundation to raise more funds to help others in Eric’s situation, and my mission is to mobilize as many people as possible to help prevent other tragedies like his from happening.

My brother’s inability to get adequate health insurance has had a devastating impact on my life. It’s broken my mother’s heart and has sent the lives of other friends and family members into a tailspin. Being excluded from the health care system because of a preexisting condition robbed my only sibling of his fair chance at life, and it robbed all of us of his gifts, talents and love.

Health care reform may come too late for Eric, but I hope it will come in time to help thousands of other families who may otherwise also lose loved ones simply because private insurance companies choose to turn away the sick, leaving them with no other options. Helping to bring about the day when everyone has the right to health insurance will be my brother Eric’s greatest gift, so please, do your part.

The House is voting today on this historic and important legislation. Let’s hope they listened. Health care is a basic human right, and should no longer be looked at as a privilege.

Related:
Pretty Help Machine: Trent Reznor and “Eric’s Army” Unite On Twitter To Save A Life [Mediaite]

Veronica De La Cruz is a former CNN TV journalist currently focusing her efforts on the fight for health care reform in memory of her late brother Eric. This post was reprinted with slight modifications from the Huffington Post.

That moment actually started with the Writer’s Strike, with legions of comedy writers suddenly having nothing to do but grow strike beards (especially the ladies) and crack jokes on the picket line. Pretty soon that translated into some killer material. The momentum continued during the election (Paris Hilton attack ad; Prop 8: The Musical) and has continued through the various tribulations of the mortgage meltdown/Wall Street collapse/total financial system implosion. Good times.

Anyhow! The latest video is from husband-and wife team Rob Kutner and Sheryl Zohn (of The Tonight Show w/ Conan and Penn & Teller: Bullshit respectively). Best line: “I didn’t live through World War Two, and the New Deal, and the Civil Rights movement, just to see America start changing all of the sudden!” Word. Below that is the “Protect Insurance Companies!” PSA featuring Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde et al: “If you spell something wrong, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so.” A little long as Business Insider points out, but still. See below:

>>>NEXT: The Real Death Panels

Matt drew my attention to a video about Obama that I had forgotten about: the “I Pledge” video put together by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore for Inauguration, featuring celebs like Cameron Diaz, Jason Bateman, Eva Mendes, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, will.i.am, Jenna Elfman, Alyssa Milano, Gina Gershon, Diddy, Nicole Richie, Kevin Connolly, Lucy Liu, Molly Sims, a weirdly grown-up Dakota Fanning and others. Apparently some school in Utah showed the video to students, which a local conservative leader called “radical, leftist propaganda.” I think that might be a bit much but there is no doubt that a few of the personal “pledges” made by some participants dip into controversy somewhat.

Anyhow – you can read my initial post here and his response here. The response below was blurted out into the Townhall comments section, but it limits you to 2,000 character replies and I CLEARLY had more to say. Then Townhall spammed me utterly, leaving me smeary and covered in goo. Ew. But, it was that bad and I’m still dealing with it, so you can deal. Video below; my response to Matt below that.

Okay now my response:

Hi Matt! Wow you have such an active commenting community. OK a few things, since you mentioned it:

(1) I’m gonna paraphrase your fave band Pearl Jam here in quoting you: “Don’t call me racist, not fit to…” I get it. I’m not reducing this whole issue to that — if you’ll notice, you brought it up as your first point, and I raised it as a possible sublimated motivator far down in my post, after I’d addressed the issues on the merits. But that said — yes, I am going to stand by it. Not for everyone, certainly, but there is a vociferousness to some of the reactions that seems…extreme. I am not alone in noting various “code words” that pop up — our old friend Carlos Watson at MSNBC noted it too, here: http://blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2009/8/11/google-stalking-carlos-watson-socialist-the-new-n-word.html — his point was that the word “socialist” was pretty, er, broadly applied. That struck me about the “concerned mother” quoted in my piece — A school address? Socialist? Really? It seemed clear that the language she was using was part of a larger pattern.

(2) Okay — just watched the Obama/celeb vid. Saw and cringed at the 3 incidents you cited, though I will say that they were INDIVIDUAL pledges personal to these people, “so getting rid of my obnoxious car for a hybrid” makes the whole green-point self-deprecatingly. But! When Demi Moore says she’s gonna be his servant, or the muscly tattooed dude kisses his biceps for Obama — I agree, ew. But can we just get some perspective here: This video isn’t BY Obama, it’s ABOUT Obama. And while at 4:14 it’s WAY too long, it’s 4:14 of about 95% awesome, noble pledges about helping those in need and supporting specific causes and reducing waste. (The “smile more” I can do without. Eh.) Should the school have shown an edited version, or, you know, watched it first? Um, YEAH. But — apples and oranges, kids. And by the way, we SHOULD cut down water bottles and turn out the lights and be aware of and try to end sex slavery. We should. End of freaking story.

(3) I agree with you that the language of “helping America” is different than “helping the President.” But context is everything. So — if the president, who kids look up to no matter what, have you not seen movies? — is trying to instill a message of “stay in school, learn and aspire” then maybe “helping” him in that common goal isn’t such a bad thing? And more to the point, is that small semantic point really more important than recognizing that kids actually DO need that push and that educational resources aren’t equally provided across the country and that for some kids it really DOES require more work to keep at it?

You and your readers should check out DonorsChoose.org sometimes — it’s a website that lists small classroom projects and items that teachers/schools can’t afford. It invites people to donate whatever they can, in the hopes that the cumulative donations will meet the need. It’ll break your heart to read the kind of small-scale stuff they need, like PAPER so they can DRAW (that’s a project I funded). You can browse schools by region all across the country. It’s really an amazing site, but it is really indicative of just how great the need is. So — getting kids excited about learning on their own, thinking books are cool, whatever — that’s a huge boost. I am not saying there weren’t missteps in the execution. But I am saying that the outcry is completely disproportionate — and shifts the focus from what is really important.

(4) Civil disobedience and dissent truly go to the root of what makes this country great (and I say this as a Canadian who has chosen to live here!).

(5) At the risk of distracting you and your readers from #3, which is the important stuff…I’m pretty sure I remember rhetoric about not undermining the Commander in Chief in a time of war etc., etc. (Did a brief Google search, here‘s an example) – that kind of rhetoric was not uncommon a few years ago. So — can we just agree that there are hotheads and nimrods on both sides and call it a day?

If you do, I’ll pledge to donate $100 to Donors Choose — and invite you to match or outdo me. How’s that?

p.s. There is SO a portrait of Demi Moore growing old and wizened in an attic somewhere. Wow.

Here’s the update: after big first week of awareness-raising, petition-signing and media coverage the De La Cruz family was able to appeal Medicare’s denial of coverage for Eric, and their appeal was successful. (Not sure if that’s attributable to Harry Reid’s office “looking into” it circa May 18th, but somehow I doubt it). Thanks to federal Medicare, Eric was able to get on the transplant list — but it will cost thousands of dollars to pay for the operation — which he needs to have before he can get treatment.

Enter Twitter. Veronica launched a fundraising campaign to raise money for the (very) expensive operation and Twitter jumped on board, under the hashtag #ERIC and with the distinctive supporter logo shown above (also seen here). It started to catch on. The retweets worked their way up, until Eric’s cause was being retweeted by Al Roker, Demi Moore, P. Diddy, Alyssa Milano, Kathy Ireland, Annie Duke, Kevin Smith, and Twitter celebs like Pete Cashmore and The Expert (for some context: Pete Cashmore has 716,304 followers; Alyssa Milano has 68,268; The Expert has 21,288; Al Roker has 19,307).

Even better, some celeb supporters did more than retweet. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails joined the cause early and upped the ante significantly, putting the fundraising call out on his website and selling off various passes to the upcoming Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction tour. Per Paste mag:

A $300 donation will grant concert attendees access to the pre-show soundcheck and a meet-and-greet with the band, while $1,000 will get you backstage for dinner and relaxing with the band, as well as stage-side viewing for the show, autographs and pictures. For fans without tickets, a $1,200 donation comes with two tickets to the show and VIP treatment backstage. This is NIN’s final tour, so fans of the band will want to seize this opportunity.

Reznor raised over $260K in the first day — and as of now he has raised over $850K. He announced on his site that he had sold out of all the VIP packages in North America (and that’s a lot of cities!), so is offering something else awesome instead: One hundred collectable, signed skateboards by Tony Hawk (737,211 Twitter followers – and another #ERIC supporter). A $1,000 donation wins the skateboard plus a copy of NIN’s rarest CD release, STILL, signed by Reznor. Here’s a Twitpic of Hawk doing the signing; here’s Reznor’s appeal for a more help:

Please consider helping if you haven’t already — we’re showing the world the power of a strong and committed community, and we’re quite possibly saving a life in the process. We still have a ways to go financially. Thank you all.

There’s retweeting, and then there’s this. Wow.

(On the other hand, I have to say that one of the weird things I’ve noticed during this campaign is a lack of CNN presence. Veronica worked at CNN, came up to New York from Atlanta, was with them until the end of 2008, parted amicably. I’ve kept an eye on her feed and the #ERIC feed Tweetdeck columns, and I have yet to notice a CNN-based retweet; searches within Rick Sanchez and Anderson Cooper for #Eric came up nil. I’m just surprised that there would be so little effort to help a former colleague — never mind that this is a legitimate story.)

So what happens now? I guess they wait — now that they are on the transplant list — and can prove that they have the money — they need an actual donor. Eric is in critical condition and, well, there’s a reason all this is happening with such urgency in the first place. In the meantime, Veronica and her family are doing what they can — with the help of “Eric’s Twitter Army.” From Trent Reznor to Tony Hawk to every celebrity retweeting out to thousands, to each individual person sending a flare up via Twitter — every little bit counts, especially now. I’ll leave the last word to Veronica:

Happy 2 be able 2 lean on my Twitter friends 4 strength, even from Cyberspace. xo