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A Bunch Of Celebrities Recorded A Song To Raise Money For Ebola. Meet One Who Said, 'No Thanks.'

In November 2014, singer-songwriter Bob Geldof recorded a revamped version of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" with a bunch of celebrities like Bono, Seal, Chris Martin from Coldplay, Sinéad O'Connor, and One Direction to raise money to fight the Ebola crisis.

Look at all these happy celebrities!

But there's one celeb who turned down the offer. Meet Fuse ODG.


Fuse ODG is an English musician of Ghanaian decent who's had some pretty successful hits over in the U.K. He's also the founding member of TINA, which stands for This Is New Africa, a movement aimed at rebuilding, empowering, and showing the beautiful sides of Africa. When it came time to put together celebrities for the Band Aid video, Geldof reached out to Fuse ODG, thinking it would be a perfect fit.

Fuse ODG almost jumped at the chance to be part of Band Aid, until he heard these lyrics...



Uh. Bono? The people of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea know what Christmas is, but since most of them are Muslim they probably don't care.

But that's a lot better than the original 1984 lyrics...





Ah yes, be thankful someone else is dying tonight and not you! Thank goodness they took that line out. Yikes. The 2014 version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has been extremely successful since its release, with over a million views in a few days and over a million dollars raised for the Ebola crisis. Fuse penned an op-ed for The Guardian titled "Why I Had to Turn Down Band Aid," and four quotes really stuck out to me.

Here's what Fuse had to say about "Do They Know It's Christmas?":

But it wasn't just the lyrics that made the project so cringeworthy. For some reason, the music video opens with a clip of a half-clothed woman (who appears to be near death or possibly dead) being carried from her home by men in hazmat suits. What a way to start a music video, huh?

Fuse on how we talk about the Ebola crisis and its victims:

I really appreciate that Fuse stressed in his article that the intentions of Band Aid were no doubt good and that we have to be careful about the way we talk about the people of Africa and those who are affected by Ebola. Africa is not a monolith where everyone is starving and living in poverty, and efforts that frame this rich continent as such do more harm than good.

Family

Mom calls out teacher who gave her son a 'zero' grade for not providing class with supplies

Her viral video sparked a debate as to whether or not providing school supplies should be mandatory for parents.

@shanittanicole/TikTok

A zero grade for not providing school supplies?

The debate as to whether or not parents should supply classroom supplies is not new. But as prices continue to rise, parents are growing more baffled as to how they can be expected by teachers to provide all the various glue sticks, colored pencils, rulers and other various items the incoming students might need.

What’s even more perplexing, however, is penalizing the children of parents who won’t (or can’t) provide them.

This was the case for Shanitta Nicole, who discovered her son received a zero grade in his new school for not bringing school supplies for the entire classroom.
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Identity

Neo-Nazis slowly realize this small town totally punked them

Local residents came together to fight Nazis a hilariously perfect way.

Image from YouTube video.

Neo-Nazis parade.

In preparation for an upcoming neo-Nazi march in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, local residents decided to fight back in a hilariously perfect way: by sponsoring each of the 250 fascist participants.

According to Heeb Magazine, "For every metre they walked, €10 went to a programme called EXIT Deutschland, which helps people escape extremist groups."

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Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called "The Apples of New York" was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson's personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.






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Identity

When a man asks people to translate a hate message he's received, their response is unforgettable

Reading the words would be one thing. Having to think about what they mean is almost too intense.


As part of an experiment, a man asks for help translating a Facebook message he has received.

There's a man in Lithuania who speaks only English. The message is in Lithuanian. He can't read it, so he asks some locals to translate it for him.

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Family

A viral photo of a calm dad and a screaming toddler holds an important parenting lesson

He exemplified patient parenting when his daughter started having a meltdown at the store.

Actor Justin Baldoni exemplified patient parenting when his daughter had a meltdown at the store.


Young kids don't always pick the best times to have emotional meltdowns.

Just ask any parent.

Grocery stores, malls, and restaurants (or any place with lots of people around) in particular seem to bring out the worst in our little ones, prompting explosive tantrums that can make even the most stoic parent turn red-faced with embarrassment.

But why be embarrassed? It's just kids being kids, after all.

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Education

A teen student delivered a masterclass on the true history of the Confederate flag

Christopher Justice broke it down into incredible details most of us probably weren't even aware of.

Six years ago, a high school student named Christopher Justice eloquently explained the multiple problems with flying the Confederate flag. A video clip of Justice's truth bomb has made the viral rounds a few times since then, and here it is once again getting the attention it deserves.

Justice doesn't just explain why the flag is seen as a symbol of racism. He also explains the history of when the flag originated and why flying a Confederate flag makes no sense for people who claim to be loyal Americans.

But that clip, as great as it is, is a small part of the whole story. Knowing how the discussion came about and seeing the full debate in context is even more impressive.

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