The billionaire

Remember the old 1950s TV show, “The Millionaire”? Remember how each week the Jeevish field rep for moneybags John Beresford Tipton would give some hard-luck case a million bucks and how, nine times out of 10, the poor chump would make an even worse mess of his life?

Fast forward to present day, with Ted Turner as donor Tipton and the United Nations playing the moke. But this time the drama is real — what we are about to witness will either be a true miracle for the downtrodden or squandering on a cosmic scale.

To be sure, Turner’s pledge of $100 million a year for the next 10 years to a foundation supporting U.N. efforts in such areas a refugee relief, health care for impoverished countries and land mine removal is an astonishing act of philanthropy. It sets an example the other super-rich should emulate. Sure, Turner still has $2 billion-plus left, but that does not diminish in any way his extraordinary generosity. He could have built a lot of monuments to himself with a billion dollars, instead he chose charity. He deserves nothing but unmitigated praise.

But putting $1 billion to good use is an awesome responsibility and there is good reason to question whether the U.N. is up to the task.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali lost his job as secretary general essentially because his approach to reform was to do it so badly all would agree it couldn’t be done at all. His successor, Kofi Annan, has a streamling plan, but it remains to be seen whether the 185 member nations can control their ever-expanding reach and regrasp the essentials.

For most of its 52 years, refugee relief and health programs were what the U.N. did best. With the end of the Cold War, without competing superpowers keeping everybody more or less in line, internal warfare has increased and the U.N. has been increasingly reluctant to step in to relieve the suffering of those caught in the middle.

When the situation cries out for the world to band together to distribute food and medicine, the U.N. all too often responds with talk, blame-fixing, study groups, extravagant conferences, empty resolutions, irrelevant side issues and more talk. That, of course, creates the nasty cycle of inaction leading to dissatisfied dues-payers leading to further inaction.

One of the best things about Turner’s gift is that it comes from a man who built a media empire from a podunk local TV station and so, one assumes, he knows a thing or two about setting goals and meeting them. It is unlikely Turner will keep his line of credit open if he sees U.N. delegates meeting in swank resorts to argue about who owns outer space while children in Rwanda starve.

So the billion-dollar question is whether the U.N. will use its windfall wisely for the benefit of humankind or whether the Family of Nations will end up blowing it on sports cars, timeshares and earthworm farms. Stay tuned.