Why The Bucket Challenge Is All Wet

of the New York Yankees, cropped from a posed picture of 1937 Major League Baseball All-Stars in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It began as a way for football teams to celebrate a championship, dumping an ice-cold bucket of a certain sports drink on the coach at the end of the game.  Now it's become standard practice even when a team wins its only game of the season.

At a time when there's violence in the Middle East and in the Midwest, we have what's called the Bucket Challenge, a fundraiser allegedly benefiting ALS research that has so far netted over $40 million.  It goes like this:  Person A challenges Person B to drop a bucket of cold water over himself, or write a check payable to ALS research.  So you have a choice--catch pneumonia or suffer the consequences of a lighter bank account.  It sounds like extortion.

Everyone in America who should know better seems to be doing it.  Celebrities, athletes, business moguls, even Presidents past and present have taken this "challenge".  The publicity value they seem to get from sacrificing their dignity must be enormous.

This is all supposed to raise "awareness" about ALS, short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  It is a degenerative neurological disease that causes muscles to weaken, and makes it difficult to speak, swallow or breathe.  Some have lived long lives after being diagnosed.  Most others, unfortunately, do not.

ALS is also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease", named for its best-known victim.  Gehrig played baseball for the New York Yankees between 1923 and 1939, appearing in 2130 consecutive games (a record since broken by Cal Ripken, Jr. in 1995).  He led the Yankees to six World Series championships, and was one of the first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Gehrig had to retire when he was diagnosed with ALS, then made his famous speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 declaring himself "the luckiest man on the face of the Earth".  By 1941, Gehrig was dead at age 37.

ALS is too serious a disease to be left up to self-aggrandizing fun seekers.  For that matter, it seems that anyone who walks barefoot across America or dips himself in a vat of hot nacho sauce doesn't do it for personal satisfaction.  Instead, it has to be tied in to some kind of "good cause", covered by an army of media who didn't bother to ask silly questions like "Who is this idiot, and why are we encouraging him by putting him on TV?"

There are two major problems with this stunt.  First is the tremendous waste of water.  If you've been paying attention, there was a water contamination emergency in Toledo, Ohio as well as a continuing drought in the West.  Ask those people how important clean drinking water is.  Also, as climate change worsens, wars might be fought over what available water is left.

The second problem is that this "challenge" is a huge waste of money.  Presently, there is no cure for ALS.  Instead, billions of dollars in donations have been spent for this and other diseases on research for as long as anyone can remember, and getting little in return.  So what happened to that "research"?  Is it really that hard to find a cure, or is it just an excuse for so-called non-profit organizations to live high on other people's money?

Should some kind of a cure be found--maybe even within our lifetimes, you can bet that Big Pharma and Big Charity will find a way to keep themselves in business by making the cure so expensive that no insurance company will want to cover it, Obamacare be damned.  Treatments and long hospital stays are where the money is, baby.

We can't stop you from getting soaked, or from donating money that would have gone into whatever bills you have to pay.  That's your decision.  Just remember that for every "good cause", there's bound to be a lot of empty promises and fatter pockets.