EM:HE--The Sadie Holmes Saga Continues

After yesterday's long-winded emotional belch, I felt appropriately unChristian and hideously guilty, while still being irked. Something didn't sit well with me about this particular homeowner. So I did what I do, and researched it.

There are several places with articles on Sadie Holmes, her eponymous charity, and her struggle with drugs.

I've perhaps had too much experience with addicts, because my first reaction to any hard-luck story from a drug-user is suspicion. Time and again I've had it proven to me that drunks and junkies are, first and foremost, liars. Stephen King, an admitted addict, calls addiction the Liar's Disease.

Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it. ...Yeah, stewbums and stoners lie about the big stuff, like how much and how often, but they also lie about the small things. Mostly just to stay in practice. Ask an active alcoholic what time it is, and 9 times out of 10 he'll lie to you. ... Addictive personalities do not prosper on their own. Without unvarnished, tough-love truth-telling from their own kind — the voices that say, ''You're lying about that, Freckles'' — the addict has a tendency to fall back into his old ways. And the chief old way (other than using, of course) is lying through one's teeth.

So why do I not necessarily believe Sadie Holmes' story of being instantly cleansed of her addiction, on the spot, by Jesus? Could it be because that version, told to DELTA Ministries, differs from the version on her website? In the "Jesus" version, Sadie was instantly sobered on her road to Drugmascus on February 4, 1995. By contrast, the Sadie Holmes website version (which matches the one told to viewers of Extreme Makeover) has her "drug-free since 1999."

This all smacks of the typical addict behaviour of telling your audience exactly what they want to hear. She seems to tell the church folk that Jesus cured her, and the less religious TV folk get the up-by-the-bootstraps-with-the-help-of-community story. The Jesus-free version of the story was also used to secure Ms. Holmes a scholarship for a business degree from Bellhaven College. She continues to panhandle, with the help of the Internet. A posting to the Orlando Craigslist (now removed) requested help with painting her charity's donated bus. The original post, entitled "Extreme Makeover Home Edition Family Needs Help Again!", elicited a vitriolic response. There's no way to guage the responses to the numerous requests for donations on her website or that of the builder, Mercedes Homes. Mercedes Homes, in fact has established three seperate funds for the family's education, home maintenance and charity efforts. Not a bad payday.

As I write about this, I'm more able to discern why it bothers me. As a Christian I'm clearly told to turn the other cheek, and to be limitless in my forgiveness. I'm failing miserably in this particular instance. I feel used and manipulated. The Sadie Holmes story, to me, is very much akin to the way TV preachers beat money out of their audience. There are a lot of lies, a lot of tears and a constant hand out for more cash. Perhaps the best commentary I've heard so far comes from my ever-wise husband.

"So what if she's manipulative? She's just beat them (ABC & EM:HE) at their own game. That whole show is about manipulation and making people cry."