"Hollywood has the attention span of a gnat,” a veteran entertainment correspondent tells me about film icons and rock stars doing global charity work. Cynical as it may sound, the short-lived global concern from Hollywood jumps from the Ethiopian famine to AIDS to debt relief to, now, the genocide in Darfur, but unfortunately nothing really ever gets done to help the dying, the needy, the suffering, and the people who need the help the most. My correspondent friend calls Hollywood’s bandwagon jumping the “issue de jour,” and there are few in the entertainment community who haven’t jumped on. Just ask one of Hollywood’s point men on Darfur, George Clooney, who recently told USA Today about the fruits of his efforts: “You want the truth? Absolutely nothing. People can march and pat each other on the back, and concerts will happen, and the simple truth is there’s still the exact same issues going on.”
   

What is going on in Darfur, Sudan? Genocide. First, a little background … Sudan’s dictator General Omar Bashir took power in a coup in 1989, and claimed to face an insurgency in Darfur in western Sudan. Actually, due to a drought, the people there were starving to death, and they wanted a little more from their oil-rich government. The dictator ignored them until a Sudanese military base was attacked in 2003. Instead of dirtying the hands of the Sudanese government troops in a nasty civil war, Bashir hired a militia known as the janjaweed or “devils on horseback” to do the dirty work. Devil is too kind of a word for the carnage that Bashir’s proxy army has wreaked on the three tribes that inhabit Darfur – over 200,000 dead, over a million displaced … there are no figures on the raped and maimed, but thousands would not be wrong.
   

Enter two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Don Cheadle and George Clooney. In a brilliant performance, Cheadle played the hotel manager who saved hundreds of Tutsi from certain death via Hutu machetes in Hotel Rwanda. Vowing never to see genocide occur again, the actor has produced a film, Darfur Now, which my entertainment correspondent friend says is certain to win the Best Documentary Oscar this year. In an attempt to balance both sides, the film has an interview with the slimy Sudanese U.N. ambassador who, of course, denies all charges of genocide despite the fact that the U.N. Security Council has called Darfur the G-word (the Hague’s main investigator in the genocide is featured prominently in the film). The filmmakers Cheadle hired bothered to go to Sudan, interviewed the antigovernment rebels the janjaweed are trying to exterminate, and showed the plight of a U.N. World Food Progamme convoy on a delivery. The film then shows Cheadle and Clooney teaming with activists to have California divest in companies with investments in Sudan (it’s signed into law – well-done Arnie!). They meet with U.N. officials, Chinese diplomats (China buys 60 percent of Sudan’s oil), Egyptian diplomats (Egypt is Sudan’s biggest trading partner), U.S. Senators (Clinton, McCain, Brownback – two Republicans and a Democrat to not make Darfur a partisan issue), and Cheadle goes to Darfur with a U.S. Congressional delegation. Filmmakers aren’t journalists, but they have points of view, and Darfur Now is a point well-taken. This is genocide, it’s wrong, people are trying to do something about it, and bureaucrats and politicians are getting in the way.
   

“George Clooney is sincere, gutsy and has some balls,” says my entertainment scribe, and guess what?  The Academy Award-winning actor and Cheadle plan to go back to Darfur with cameras and dig deeper because, as Clooney told USA Today, it’s still going on. In this era of citizen journalism, when these two actors aren’t throwing parties and concerts about Darfur, they’re actually going there and filming stories. I’ve never been to Darfur, but I’ve been to my fair share of war zones, and agree with my friend that these men have courage. But, I can tell them both that they’re in for a rude awakening. Yes, their star power will illuminate a horrible situation and definitely raise money for refugees – that’s what star power does but the U.N. and African Union have been unable to get peacekeepers into Darfur, so how can two Hollywood actors get the peacekeepers in?  Nothing has happened diplomatically at the peace table between Sudan and the rebels that are chronicled in Darfur Now, so two famous actor guys are going to change that? China thumbs its nose at any country, organization, or human rights activist who gets in the way of their economic juggernaut, so two Hollywood boys are going to get China to stop buying Sudanese oil?
   

When I covered sniper alley in Sarajevo or the killing fields in Rwanda, I never thought my stories would end the carnage. Maybe we could shine a light on these horrific situations and make people tired of seeing them nightly on their TV sets, but I never took myself seriously enough to think I could be an agent of change. Clooney and Cheadle are going to Darfur as activist filmmakers thinking they can change things in Sudan. They’re going to realize, as once again my entertainment correspondents states, that these “governments can’t be swayed by you.” Even if General Bashir is a fan of the Ocean’s Eleven flicks, that’s not going to change his mind about what he considers a Sudanese internal security matter. Is Chinese President Hu Jintao going to stop buying Sudanese oil as his economy shifts into overdrive and provides a showcase for the world in the Olympics this summer? Where is the outrage of the Muslim world (Sudan is a Muslim country) and the African nations? Are those countries going to boycott the Beijing Olympics because of Darfur? Don’t hold your breath.
   

The first Hollywood foray into global charity was the Bangladesh concert sponsored by George Harrison in 1971. It’s a really rocking show and a DVD worth owning, but what no one remembers is that the food rotted on the docks in the cyclone-ravaged nation, and corrupt officials fleeced the rockers’ good intentions. Promoter and rocker Bob Geldof learned the lessons from the Harrison debacle and Live Aid was a huge success and starving Ethiopians got fed. Every famous singer in the world was part of We are the World, checking their egos at the door, and filling up bloated African stomachs and insect covered infants. Bono actually toured African nations with a sitting U.S. Treasury Secretary for third world debt relief.
   

But what entertainer has changed the world? We still have a rampant AIDS pandemic, staggering third world debt, people still starve to death. It’s great that the entertainment community has a conscience and actually tries to do something, but it never really amounts to much. Now, we’ve gone from the Bangladesh concert to Live Aid to USA for Africa to two actors running around Darfur with video cameras in a real-life David Lean flick with real bullets and real death and real genocide thinking they can end it? The Western man’s quest to assuage and cleanse a guilty conscience of Africa’s horrors via a Hollywood issue de jour isn’t enough anymore. Heck, I’m not saying to sit on your hands and do nothing, but Clooney and Cheadle aren’t going to stop the killing with video cameras. The janjaweed and rebels are in it for the long haul, as one female rebel toting a Kalashnikov assault rifle told Cheadle’s team, “I have learned to fight. It’s like drinking water.”
   

It’s time for the international community to stand up and show the same kind of courage Clooney has and tell Sudan’s General Bashir and China, “Enough.” That’s the only way Darfur ends, regardless of Hollywood and its issue de
jour. Stopping the genocide is truly the only happy Hollywood ending in Darfur.