We can do better than these clucks

More clucking and feathers flew in Martha Stewart’s world last week than in the Palais de Poulet, the chicken coop on her Connecticut farm.

Our lady of the prison poncho tangled with Donald Trump, her orange-haired former pal, over the failure of her version of “The Apprentice.” The result — covered extensively by Newsweek and other media outlets — created such a fracas that there’s only one thing left for Americans to do: Fire them both.

Stewart complained that her show got off on the wrong foot because she wasn’t allowed to fire Trump in her very first episode.

Trump wrote back a scathing letter disparaging everything from her on-air demeanor to her daughter to the sale of that infamous stock itself. “Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone,” he sniped.

Stewart stretched the bounds of credulity in her defense. “Many young entrepreneurs learned so much from the show and enjoyed it,” she said. “Many families sat their children down weekly to watch it.”

These shows can hardly be seen as an important contribution to the world. Based on Trump’s aggressive, self-aggrandizing persona, they enhance and perpetuate Americans’ least appealing qualities. They feature back-biting and bickering contestants and stars who glamorize greed.

If Stewart and Trump truly want to make a difference, they might want to seek a couple of apprenticeships of their own.

This month, I’d recommend they file applications with Time magazine persons of the year Bill and Melinda Gates and rock musician Bono.

Gates has transformed his image of a hyper-competitive technology entrepreneur into the world’s leading philanthropist. With an endowment of $29 billion, his foundation fights diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria in developing countries.

Closer to home, its Web site lists 57 schools in Spokane alone, ranging from Ferris High School to Rogers, that have received its education grants. Last year the Gates Foundation helped Transitions house 20 homeless families in Spokane.

In 2005 Bono raised awareness through his Live 8 concerts and helped persuade wealthy countries to cancel the debts of poorer ones. Now he’s heading the One Campaign, which Gates and a long list of world service organizations and churches joined as well. It’s an effort to persuade the U.S. president and Congress to devote an additional 1 percent of the federal budget to bringing economic justice to people in extreme poverty in Africa.

Many children there would be lucky to live in such splendor as Martha Stewart’s Araucana hens.

Bono spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month to a bipartisan Washington crowd and pointed out that the Bible addresses serving the poor more than 2,100 times.

He concluded his remarks with these words: “There is a continent — Africa — being consumed by flames.

“I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did — or did not to — to put the fire out in Africa.”

Imagine what might happen if Trump and Stewart converted their drive and talent for real estate and homemaking into tangible actions to fight homelessness and hunger. It’s not such a stretch: Trump donated $1 million to United Way three years ago, after all. And Stewart’s foundation makes grants to projects that serve women and children.

In the end, it’s all very easy to give advice to the world’s wealthy celebrities.

But what of the rest of us?

I suspect that, together, we could trump their efforts. The answer begins with climbing off the couch, turning off dreary reality TV shows and reaching out to join these icons in creating a new world.

As Bono said, “History, like God, is watching what we do.”