Fair Vanity at "Vanity Fair"

A good friend told me that this month’s Vanity Fair magazine is all about Africa and the people and programs around the world that are trying to help Africa face and overcome her challenges. It’s a great issue, with articles about various programs including Product (Red) and yes, Millennium Villages Project (MVP), or rather about Jeff Sachs the founder of MVP. Anyone who cares to learn more about the state of Africa today should read this issue. Link to Vanity Fair's Africa issue.

Right now I’m on my way back from America. So many people know so little about what is going on in the rest of the world, especially Africa, and the little that they do know or think they know is mostly antiquated or negative perspectives about corruption, AIDS, and people shooting each other in the streets. The interesting thing is that a person will talk about how awful, unsafe, and undesirable Africa is and then mention about people getting shot in their city, about the neighbor who is HIV positive (or maybe they have no idea), and about the injustices of oil prices and the war in Iraq without realizing that they face the same issues in their own beloved country.

Most Americans really love America. This is great, but often this love of state is blinding. Yes, there are a lot of problems “over there,” but there are an equal number of problems at home. Equally there are good things in the states and good things in other countries. We can learn a lot by just being open to learning about them and not wearing rose colored glasses when looking at our current situation.

Bono is a guest editor of this month’s “Vanity Fair.” He has suggested to the magazine to change the name to Fair Vanity. Not a bad idea… I believe that some more American’s could use a little less Vanity Fair and more Fair Vanity.