Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation Spends Money On Anything But Bravery

Last month I wrote an article questioning the Born This Way Foundation's charity outreach program and Lady Gaga's latest attempt to get donations.  The main question being "what exactly does the foundation do?".  The latest antic was a tier-level donation pyramid suggesting that the more money you donate, the better a fan you are.  Your donation is then entered into a contest with the grand prize being a dinner with Gaga and her family at her family's restaurant.

Another good question - what exactly has the Born This Way Foundation done? No one knows for sure - until now.

Lady Gaga's foundation spends more money on marketing, lawyers and consultants than actually combating bullying, inspiring bravery and breeding compassion.

According to a report from ShowBiz411, Lady Gaga, her mother Cynthia and the foundation spent 1.5 million dollars of your donation money on legal fees, publicity and a website.  In addition to that, they spent $348,000 on the Born Brave bus  in 2012.

I'll take this a step further than quoting a celebrity website.  Here's the actual tax return!  The first page shows a side-by-side comparison of expenses from the previous and current year.  The expenses more than doubled.  

Here's where some of the donations went:

• $362,921 on web design and consulting.
• $348,000 on event production
• $406,552 on legal fees
• $72,752 on salaries
• $79,862 on accounting
• $808,661 on other expenses
• $9203 on office expenses
• $77,923 on travel
• $150,000 on philanthropic consulting

I guess we now know what the impact of your donations are! Oh and it's still not clear what this charity does aside from spending your money on anything but bullying. I'll say one thing, bravery is indeed being inspired and Stefani and her mom are the ones being inspired; because it takes some very big balls to call yourself a charity, spend donation money frivolously while you sip champagne with fashion designers on a private jet wearing a fur coat.

Remember these figures the next time you buy something on eBay and you see this.

Thank you Leo for the ShowBiz101 article and thank you Brandy for the eBay screenshot.

Afterward:  I should point out that it's unknown if these expenses were paid from the donation pool, out of pocket by Gaga or a combination of both.  The monetary amounts seem excessive so my hunch is that Gaga's own personal expenses are being written off through the foundation.  

UPDATE!

Jennifer O'Neill, Lady Gaga's former assistant (or someone claiming to be her) is on Reddit right now holding a Q&A session!!  CHECK.IT.OUT. Part one is here.

Some snippets

This one is interesting.

Jennifer O'Neill answered that question.  Her answer was "he thought she was involved in a death" or something to that effect.  Jennifer removed her reply before I could screencap it but I promise you it was there.  Thank you Alexa for the tip!

Forbes says Lady Gaga "has a price"

What would you do for $2 million? Would you sell out your values? Apparently Lady Gaga would.

Lady Gaga is being paid $2 million by Doritos to make an appearance at South-by-Southwest's Music Festival, held in Austin from March 7-16 of this year (http://sxsw.com/music). She will be participating in several gimmicks promoting the festival (and herself). What kind of gimmicks are we talking about here? Peeing in a bucket? Howling in the woods? Not quite. 

Doritos has built a 64-foot vending machine stage, which Forbes calls "obnoxious" and "tacky". The stage is powered by tweets (whatever that means), and will distribute a prize: Gaga tickets. 

Fans will have to perform ridiculous stunts in order to win those tickets, including jumping from a 30-foot high platform to snatch a dangling ticket, playing music in the streets to try and earn money (ten dollars in ten minutes and you win!) and roller-derby in inflatable sumo suits against professionals. 

But what if you don't want to perform a stunt? Don't worry! You can still get your Gaga ticket! You just have to allow Doritos to give you a "stupid haircut"! How fun! 

How... embarassing. What kind of person allows their fans to be publicly humiliated in exchange for a ticket to your show? Clearly Forbes has a point in calling Lady Gaga "cheapened", for accepting a payment to allow this to happen. 

One thing though: weren't a bunch of her shows supposed to be sold out? So who is responsible for her shows selling out, fans or corporations? 

If Gaga's star isn't fading, she would have no trouble selling out her shows as she used to. She wouldn't need to rely on giveaways. And yet, here we are. Not only is she being forced to give away tickets to her shows, she's allowing her fans to publicly embarrass themselves in order to get them. I'm with Forbes when they say: this is shameful.

"I just love the music, not the bling", she sings in the title track ARTPOP. 

Interesting. Let's see who Miss I-Hate-Money is accepting the bling from anyway.

Doritos, which is owned by Frito-Lay, is a subsidiary of PepsiCo. PepsiCo made $65.4 billion in sales last year and is currently ranked 43 on the Fortune 500. 

Wow! Not a bad company to partner up with! Maybe with a conglomerate like that behind her, she'll finally be able to compete with Katy Perry.

Thanks for the link Pizzazz!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2014/03/06/sxsws-death-by-doritos-with-an-assist-from-lady-gaga/

Lady Gaga: A Stage Four Fame Clinger

All the stars were out in Hollywood last night for the 2014 Academy Awards and respective after parties. Stargazers got a glimpse of their favourite celebrities, from Brad and Angie, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey, as they lined up for days like sheep behind the barriers.  The glitz and glamour of Hollywood was out in full force last night.  Of course, wherever you find real stars, you'll also find their hangers-on.  Like Hollywood vampires sucking from the fame teat to nourish their insatiable appetite for attention.  

Enter a 27 year old pop star with fame teetering on the edge of irrelevancy.  Lady Gaga attended the Oscars last night and she wasted not one moment to make sure the cameras and attention were focused solely on her. Instead of being a good sport and behaving with integrity by arriving on-time and sharing the red carpet with the real stars, Gaga arrived extremely late to make sure she had the red carpet, cameras and attention all to herself.  All the nominees at that point were seated and Gaga was just like a junkie desperate for a heroin fix.  She lives for the applause after all. The downside of her old and transparent trick is we get to see all the Botox and other fillers she's put in her face.  Check out Gaga and all her pulled back facelift glory.  Gaga was likely invited as a guest of her future self in 20 years.

Gaga and Gaga in 20 years

I can't forget to link Lainey Gossip's or Naughty But Nice Rob's post about this too.

Get More:
The Gossip Table, Celebrity Gossip

More from the Gaga Dangling Bananagate

Well look what we have here.  Even Gaga's fans find her charity contest giveaway an insult to their devotion.  As I pointed out in a previous post, Gaga set up her contest to suggest that the more money you donate, the bigger and better a fan you are.  The less money you can give, the poorer a fan you are.  It's still not clear what Gaga's foundation does or where the money is going.  I'm sure she'll buy a few more fur coats with some of it. Maybe she can find some punk fur coats.  Now her fans are speaking up and they're doing it in the online shrine Gaga set up for herself.

The irony of her fans at pointing out the same issues with Gaga as I've made myself is refreshing. Thank you Sean for sending this to me.

Universal Music Group hit hard by Lady Gaga’s album flop

Source article here.