April 25, 2005

Celebs Celebrate "Primitive" Lifestyles

[Drew] Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."

No, her septic system in LA didn't break down. Barrymore, along with Cameron Diaz and other "eco-friendly" celebs are part of the new MTV series Trippin', where they travel to poor countries to admire how the other half lives.

The 32-year-old Diaz, who earns a reported $20-million a movie, boasted that the cow-dung slathered walls of a Nepalese village hut were "beautiful" and "inspiring," and she called the primitive practice of "pounding mud" with sticks to construct a building foundation "the coolest thing."
Diaz also criticized the lifestyles of many Americans after visiting an indigenous village in Chile. "It's kinda gotten out of hand how much convenience we think we need," she said. Despite the celebrities' praise for the primitive life, "Trippin'" shows them flying on multiple airplanes and chartering at least two helicopters and one boat to reach remote locations over the course of the first four episodes.

The series also showed the celebrities being chauffeured to the airport in a full-size Chevy SUV -- despite several on-screen, anti-SUV factoids noting how environmentally unfriendly SUVs are.

So I need people like Diaz, who earns multi-millions each year, to lecture me on how much I need to cut down on convenience? This while she takes a chartered jet and gets chauffered in a gas hog? It'd be laughable if it wasn't so damn annoying. Read the whole article to get the true flavor of how outrageous this is...especially when you discover that the show (not to mention its "stars") never mentions the poverty and death rates of these countries, including infant mortality rates.