Micheal: “My father is no different than any other powerful man — any man who’s
responsible for other people, like a senator or president.”

KAY: “You know how naive you sound…senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”

MC: “Oh, who’s being naive, Kay?”

This was taken from the wedding scene in The Godfather Part I, when Michael begins to tell Kay of his family life.

I think Michael makes a great point, not just about how politics works, but about how everything works.  Unfortunately, not all seemingly clean institutions are all what they appear.  The skepticism that has resulted from many scams in the past has made it hard for legitimate organizations to gain trust.

I hope no one else had to experience this, but while canning for THON, one of my friends was told “This is for beer money, right?” by a driver.  Old people shook their heads as they passed me.  My own uncle questioned what canners were doing because he had just seen them a couple weeks ago.  (I explained that all of the canning is done in the Fall now.)  Unfortunately, there is some inherent skepticism in people about the genuiness of organizations based on seeing the few organizations that are scams get away with so much.

Michael is right, that there is so much more complexity and “dirty work” done behind closed doors that we’ll never really know about.  Unfortunately, this skepticism sometimes translates to the skepticism of good causes.