November 2, 2010; Source: Herald Sun | Is that Herald Sun headline a pun? Pamela Anderson recently pledged to donate the $25,000 she would receive for a Playboy cover shoot—nude, recreating Anita Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita”—to a charity that would provide assistance to Indonesian disaster victims (the charity is Waves for Water, which provides clean drinking water for disaster areas).
The idea didn’t sit well with the Islamic Defenders Front, whose representative said the donation would be “against the law of God” due to the immorality of the Playboy photo shoot in the buff. “If she wants to be photographed naked, then she is challenging a bigger disaster to happen in Indonesia.”
How interesting! Remember when fundamentalists John Hagee and Pat Robertson both attributed Hurricane Katrina to God’s wrath against New Orleans for its immorality, emphasizing apparently the proclivity of some New Orleanians toward sinful “secular permissiveness,” as Hagee put it (read: gay and lesbian). One U.S. radio talk jockey noted that the Islamic Defenders Front seems to believe that Anderson’s immoral behavior might cause another tsunami, at least it would if Indonesian charities accepted the tainted dough.
This isn’t Anderson’s first foray into nudity on behalf of charity. Previously, she did a PETA shot in the nude as well as a couple of others in which she wore something other than a snowsuit (here and here)—she is a vegetarian, you know.
Waves for Water has been active not only in Indonesia, but in Haiti and Pakistan as well. In Indonesia, the Jakarta Globe said that Waves helped give water filters to 2,000 people in Padang and helped 37 villages in Bali get clean water.
The Islamic Defenders Front said it runs an aid center for disaster victims and asked the press not to write that it “can only kill people.” We think the former Baywatch star’s charitable generosity is noteworthy. We doubt she picked Indonesia simply to flaunt nude greenbacks. Imagine how the Front might have reacted to a donation from a David Hasselhoff photo shoot.—Rick Cohen
