MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Critical of celebrities for acting insensitively during LA fires – Is it surprising?

Well, that didn’t take long.

Celebrities once again have shown that they can remain unaffected by tragedy or disaster. They seem immune to the collective suffering experienced by ordinary people.

Exhibit A: America’s one-time sweetheart, Mandy Moore.

As LA wildfires continue raging, the 40-year-old actress is begging for money on Instagram.

For example, the lead actress of ‘This Is Us’, a highly successful TV show that brought in $23 million for her during its six seasons, is now asking regular Americans to contribute to a fundraiser for her own family members.

An example of this insensitivity is displayed in Moore’s recent Instagram post, where she is seen promoting a GoFundMe campaign for her adult in-laws, one of whom is described as a ‘touring musician’ expecting a baby.

Maybe he should get a real job. Just a thought.

The target fundraising goal for these two privileged, hipster Angelenos, by the way: $60,000.

Please. That’s the equivalent of change in Moore’s surely custom-made couch cushions.

No matter. This is what she wrote in that gibberish post, defending herself against critics who say she has plenty of money to help her family out:

‘People questioning whether we’re helping out our own family or attributing some arbitrary amount of money google [sic] says someone has is NOT helpful or empathetic.’

Of course not, Mandy. That’s the point.

Why would, or could, we empathize with you? Empathy is the result of having experienced the exact same set of circumstances.

Most of us aren’t sitting on $23 million.

America made Mandy Moore, a mediocre talent at best, a multimillionaire. She never has to work another day in her life. She and her family can live like royalty off her substantial passive income.

Yet she has the unmitigated gall to ask honest, hardworking, regular people of little-to-no means to finance her in-laws — while spewing outrage at anyone who rightly takes offense!

This post is unbelievable. She hasn’t even disabled the comments, which are scathing.

A sampling:

‘The audacity’.

‘I just lost my measly 1 bedroom apartment I owned and worked super hard for . . . but do I have a go fund me no! I have struggled and made my own way’.

‘You’re a multimillionaire lmao figure it out’.

‘You have an obscene amount of money. I think you could help your own family and also some others while you’re at it’.

‘Just the nerve’.

‘Did their bank account burn down too?’

Friends, I don’t think Mandy’s reading these comments. If she is, she clearly doesn’t care.

She goes on:

‘Our buddy Matt started this go fund me’ — so don’t blame her, even though it’s her post! — ‘and I’m sharing because people have asked how they can help them’.

Really? People are asking how they can help a couple they’ve never heard of, related to one of LA’s wealthiest A-listers? Okay. Sure.

‘We just lost most of our life in a fire too’, she writes.

Here’s the difference, Mandy: You can easily rebuild, insurance or not. You can build back better and bigger or move your family anywhere in the world. Most everyone who has lost everything cannot.

Most people have been left with nothing. Unbowed, Moore concludes with this salvo:

‘Kindly F off. No one is forcing you to do anything’.

You know what, Mandy? You kindly ‘f’ off. ‘F’ alllll the way off.

Let’s hope this is a reputation-defining, extinction-level event that Moore and her fellow heartless celebs from — like Khloe Kardashian — never recover from. Khloe (reported net worth: $60 million) who oh-so-proudly announced she has donated $2,500 in meals to first responders.

Wow.

Or Khloe’s equally vulgar sister Kim, who promoted ‘WINTER SALE’ prices for her Skims line — replete with sex-doll photos of Kim bursting out of her undergarments — as LA burned to the ground on Tuesday night.

The irrelevant, one-time reality star Heidi Montag filmed herself crying and clutching her 2-year-old son for clicks and likes.

‘I just want to go home’, she wailed.

Cost of said home: $3 million. Tell it to your shrink, lady.

JLo, who currently has a $60 million Beverly Hills mansion on the market, encouraged her followers to donate. Stop this. JLo: Just take a chunk of your millions, donate yourself, and stop telling the little people — who can barely afford groceries in this economy — what to do.

Even Henry Winkler, once known as the nicest guy in show business, wrote this, about a suspected local arsonist, on X: ‘May you be beaten [until] you [are] unrecognizable!!!’

And celebrities wonder why America increasingly has no use for them. Why we have zero interest in being lectured by a bunch of wealthy, famous hypocrites on how to live, what to think, who to vote for.

This is who they really are behind the mask. The truth is ugly.

Same with the media. David Muir of ABC ‘News’ — what a joke — preening like Zoolander with his cinched-back, big-boy firefighter jacket amid smoldering ruins.

Or CNN’s Anderson Cooper ‘braving’ the LA wildfires. The first rule of journalism: It’s not about you, the reporter. It’s never supposed to be about you.

There is absolutely zero reason for these overpaid, perfectly groomed anchors to be flying in from the East Coast. Drones can do this.

Muir, Cooper and their ilk are there for one reason only: Their own vainglory.

Maybe all these celebs and newsreaders could, I don’t know, use their leverage to demand answers from local and state government, from Mayor Karen Bass to the cowardly Governor Gavin Newsom (last seen running away from an outraged LA mom in broad daylight).

Maybe they could shut up and stay off social media for a few measly days.

Maybe they could engage in their favorite pastime and ‘recognize’ their ‘privilege’ as they hole up at the Beverly Hills Hotel and share war stories over that famous $44 McCarthy salad.

And maybe, just maybe, they could show some respect for the less fortunate, whose lives will never be the same.

If not, at the very least, why not do what they’re paid so handsomely to do: Fake it.

Because that sure beats the alternative.