There’s probably a reason a lot of people had forgotten about Hands Across America until filmmaker Jordan Peele used it as a plot point in his 2019 horror movie US. You, see, Hands Across America was one of many greatest promotion and fund-raising blunders of the latter quarter of the 20th Century.
Burger King had the “Where’s Herb?” commercial. Coca-Cola had New Coke. McDonald’s had the Arch Deluxe, McDLT, Mac Tonight and that whole McPizza thing. And then there was Pepsi Harrier Jet fiasco preceded by the NBC Olympic Triplecast blunder.
If you don’t remember them, then it’s quite obvious. Hands Across America was coming on the heels of Band Aid/Live Aid and “We Are the World.” It was organized by Ken Kragen, co-founder of USA for Africa, as a way of raising funds for hungry children in America. The idea was to have people hold hands forming a long line of people from the East Coast to the West Coast. Of course, Alaska and Hawai’i were immediately excluded.
And so were a lot of other states. Aside from extreme western parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, most Southern states were left out completely. So were the states in The Great Plains, Pacific Northwest and most of the Rocky Mountain states. Even though the route started in New York City, the rest of the state and other New England states were left out, leading to a goof in that Cheers episode where Cliff Claven said he participated in Hands Across America.
No, t was really more like Hands Across Parts of America. This meant to participate, people had to travel hundreds of miles just to stand in one spot for 15 minutes. So maybe Cliff did travel from Boston down to the Big Apple but I don’t think he would. So, he probably donated money as his part of participation.
And then there was the fact that organizers were asking for $10 per person, which is about $30 in today’s dollar. Also, some of the people in the line hadn’t paid. I mean, what were they going to do? They couldn’t have a hall monitor stand around every few hundred yards checking everyone’s receipt. They had estimated they would need almost six million people for it to be a success. Instead there were less than five-and-a-half million.
So, being liberal that it’s one person every three feet, that’s about 1.5 million feet where there were breaks in the chain. That’s well over 250 miles of the route where there were no one mainly in the Southwestern states. And there was only about $36.4 million raised with $8.6 million of that coming from corporate donations. The rest was from individuals.
Also, only about $15 million of that money was ever donated to charities and organizations. The rest, which was well over $21 million or about 60 percent was used to cover overhead and expenses. Oh, and even though the event happened with seven months left in 1986, not one single charity saw a dime for the remainder of the year.
After much criticism, the first distributions were dispensed in January 1987 with the final distributions in November of 1987 a good year and a half after the event. The music video for the song “Hands Across America” exploited many children who talked about living in poverty and not having enough food. The song was written by Marc Blatte, John Carney and Larry Gottlieb and had been unveiled in January of 1986.
The music video also contained numerous cameos by celebrities including Kenny Rogers, Raul Julia, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Kathleen Turner, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Bacon, Robin Williams, Don Johnson and his Miami Vice co-star Philip Michael Thomas, as well as Lily Tomlin and Babs herself Barbra Streisand. You can also see Yoko Ono at one point, even though I’m sure this wasn’t the reason it failed.
No, the failure, I think was people were just fatigued from having to donate especially as the mid-1980s weren’t the best times because of “that sumbitch Reagan” and Reaganomics. Most policies that had helped lower-income people and families were slashed because the Reagan Administrator created the concept of the “Welfare Queen” and basically black and brown skinned people were freeloaders and moochers.
Reagan’s policies dismantled labor unions that had been effective and companies were allowed tax cuts so they started slashing salaries and wages. Minimum wage in May 1986 was only $3.05 an hour. So, asking someone to donate $10 (about half a day’s pay in their take home) was asking a lot. Needless to say, it’s made people skeptical. Most charity organizations are still facing backlash and criticism for using donations to pay salaries for executives. You can’t even buy a tube of $1 toothpaste at Dollar General now without being asked to make a donation to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. And it’s actually DG taking your donation and using it as a tax write-off themselves.
The child exploitation I think pissed a lot of people off. The first person to form the tethered hands was Amy Sherwood, 6, whose family had been living in a welfare hotel. Wonder how much they received? A year earlier, Sam Kinison while appearing on an HBO comedy show hosted by Rodney Dangerfield criticized USA for Africa and other organizations for their exploitations. He was mainly talking about “We Are the World.”
It didn’t take long before other comics and actors would mock these ensemble singer/musician collaborations. It was parodied both on In Living Color and of course The Simpsons, which also parodied Hands Across the America as it shows Homer watching TV while everyone around him is holding hands. Movies like Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star and the “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck” bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live! showed just how pompous and arrogant it seemed for celebrities to pat themselves on the back for such things.
What the hell was Dan Aykroyd doing there if it was to be taken seriously?
I remember following 9/11 watching America: A Tribute to Heroes wondering if Brad Pitt, Jack Nicholson and everyone else were actually fielding calls on a switchboard from donors. I remember one of my drama teachers telling me there are phones that are designed to ring until they are picked up. Yes, it might be a nice gesture but Steve Buscemi, who had been a FDNY firefighter, actually contacted his old engine crew and spent a week going through the rubble. He didn’t talk about it for years before it was later spread on social media.
I don’t mean to sound like a grouch but Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was released on Dec. 7, 1984 while “We Are the World” was recorded less than two months later. Netflix touts it as The Greatest Night in Pop but Michael Jackson, who co-wrote, was known to be a glory hound. While he and co-writer Lionel Ritchie might have been “inspired,” my guess they didn’t want to be guilted so they one-upped the Band Aid’s mostly U.K. line-up.
Yet both of the songs have been criticized for a stereotypical view of Ethiopia and Africa in general as just a desert and primitive villages. It might surprise a lot of people to know that Ethiopia and other African countries have very modern communities. Despite what people may think about the South and the Great Plains, there are a lot of modern communities as well.
This might be why many people decided to “Just Say No” to Hands Across America. While excluding about two-thirds of the countries states and only going through major metropolitan areas of other states, the organizers sent a message to a lot of Americans that they weren’t important, just their checkbooks were.
Two years ago, Winfrey and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson faced similar backlash when they asked people to donate for the Hawai’ian wildfire relief efforts. Considering they both have huge net worths, it seemed condescending to ask people as gas and food prices rise to relief efforts the government should be doing. And that was the criticism in the aftermath of Hands Across America.
And even today as the current administration refuses to help even red states that have been hit hard by hurricanes, tornadoes and other storm damage. So, the criticism is warranted toward celebrities who ride on space trips or tell us we’re just going to have to do with two dolls this Christmas instead of 30 shows just how out of touch people are. World hunger is still a problem and the gummint thinks we need to spend money to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army which is also someone’s 79th birthday.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 