Hollywood has come to the Beltway this week as both Ben Affleck and comedian Seth Rogen were in Washington, D.C. to bring awareness to causes near and dear to their hearts. We first began hearing rumblings in online media over whether or not Ben Affleck was qualified enough to speak as an authority on the Democratic Republic of Congo. But when you’ve founded a foundation to help people in the Congo – like Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative – you should never catch any flack. Shrouded by civil war since 1998, million have been killed since 1998, millions more have been force to flee. "I am not a Congo expert but an American trying to do my part," Affleck said before the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations this week.
Seth Rogen was at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday to talk about Alzheimer’s disease. "The situation is so dire that it caused me, a lazy, self-involved, generally self-medicated man-child to start an entire charity organization," Rogen said. "I came here today for few reasons. One, I'm a huge House of Cards fan. Two, people need more help. I've personally witnessed the massive amount of financial strain this disease causes. The third reason I'm here, simply, is to show people that they're not alone. So few people share their personal stories, so few people have something to relate to, I know that if me and my wife saw somebody like me talking about this, we would feel less alone.”
Rogen launched Hilarity for Charity to help educate young Americans about the disease after his mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age 55. Rogen told senators his mother-in-law continued to decline and could not speak or feed herself by the time she was 60-years-old. He joined doctors from the National Institutes of Health and former Rep. Dennis Moore of Kansas, who has Alzheimer's, on a witness panel at the hearing.
