Good Deeds Done Anonymously

Today in American Studies, the class was having a discussion about the advertisements pertaining to 9/11 on during the football game. The ad that was the most heavily discussed was the Verizon ad. The discussion generally revolved around the idea that Verizon was unfairly using a tragedy to make money. I feel though that this conclusion is not really fair. Why single out Verizon for this act? I feel that Americans as a whole demonstrate the idea of wanting everybody to know about the good deeds that they do anonymously. When someone donates money to build a building, he gets his name on a little plaque for all of the world to see. When someone wants to show how much they care about the environment, she buys a Prius instead of planting a tree or lowering their carbon output. Because of this I do not think that it is fair to single out Verizon for making a commercial when we ourselves are guilty of this very act. The only organization I know of that gives without expecting any return is Barcelona F.C. The club pays UNICEF to have the UNICEF sponsor on the fronts of their jerseys. In the end though, we have to expect this because of the type of society that we live in. One in which a company has to make money to stay afloat because the individual businesses are made up of shareholders that expect a profit to be turned.