There's a difference between comedic impersonations and bigoted mockery; between comedy and things that make racists, bullies, mean spirited, angry people laugh. One could invoke the German Schadenfreude; yet the laughter when a clown slips on a banana peel isn't quite the same and isn't as universal as the sound that comes from the man in the white sheet laughing at the humiliation of another man.
Ive seen enough bullies in my day. I've seen some of them confronted and heard the common refrains of "I'm the victim here" and the almost inevitable " didn't you know I was joking?" So I wasn't surprised to hear Glenn Beck whine to Meredith Viera that his detractors didn't have a sense of humor adequate to know that when he advocates beating a public official with a shovel or tells us of the need to shoot Democratic leaders in the head, it's those dumb liberals who are humorless.
For the most part, the law has never found incitement amusing: shouting fire when there isn't one - for laughs. Even those orating innocently about a strike have been punished in America because someone used the occasion to toss a bomb. You don't make bomb jokes in the airport and you don't joke about killing democrats to an audience you know to include deranged and armed enemies of Democrats - even if for no other reason than avoiding making yourself look bad. But looking bad is just what many of these frustrated losers want to do.
But times seem to be changing and that old time evil is bubbling up again, or at least some groups now have enough power to make the clowns take off the blackface and to think twice about anti-Semitic rants and maybe be a bit more circumspect before going after Homosexuals Females and all the other pet victims of the Right.
Mexicans? Chinese? Well they are still targets of opportunity for those willing to descend that far. Some comedians don't realize they're being offensive to people who don't deserve it, some of them don't care as long as they get an audience and others couldn't get a job unless it was entertaining bigots. So if Margaret Cho makes jokes about her Korean family, we don't cringe - unless we are her relatives. When Michael Richards goes on an N-word binge we question his sense of decency -- to say the least.
Watching Dennis Leary's charity benefit the other day, I was appalled at his crude attempt to make fun of the world's most widely spoken language. No, not the real difficulties of speaking, it but with facial contortions and weird sounds that didn't seem funny or sound anything like Chinese to one familiar with the language. Bad taste I think, and enough to alienate a lot of people to the objectives of his charity.
And then there's Limbaugh.
What is an American president called when he visits China? They call him Mr. President. He's only called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face and we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them.
What is Chinese President Hu Jintao called when he's a guest here? The "Chicom Dictator " says Rush. "Ching chong, ching chong, chong" mocks the flatulent Palm Beach Bastard Billionaire, who makes a living lowering the estimation of my country in the eyes of the world. Condescending, contemptuous and contemptible: "Ching chong, ching chong, chong"
No, Presidents from Nixon onward have been treated well in China, it's only in the sewers of the American Right that President Obama is called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face to induce them to trust our intentions and yet we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them while his adolescent friends laugh and mock.
Of course he knows what he's doing, and of course he doesn't care if he puts a white sheet on Uncle Sam and confirms the belief of billions that we are a nation of snarling pirates who don't deserve respect or trust or cooperation. He'll keep doing it as long as we let him, support him, laugh at him, watch him and patronize his unworthy, unscrupulous and unAmerican sponsors.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Ugly American
Have we become a nation of skateboard and spray can street brats who live just to piss off the adults and piss on everything we can just for the fun of it; laughing with idiot glee while impressing our idiot friends?
Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the US dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barak Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.
That's right - lo
ok at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits to the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian an men from the gates of the forbidden city.
Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?
Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.
Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'
Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.
Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the US dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barak Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.
That's right - lo
ok at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits to the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian an men from the gates of the forbidden city. Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?
Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.
Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'
Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Glass houses
Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time understanding the pervasive attitude toward the Chinese crackdown on rioting Muslim separatists in Xinjian - if indeed that's what is happening. Articles like this one at Newsweek.com stress the "spin" being put on the rioting and the government response to it and indeed the reasons behind the unrest. I don't pretend to have facts that would challenge any accounts of what's going on, but I do have some history that fairly screams hypocrisy.
How many countries, including our own, treat separatist, secessionist movements without violence? How many can claim fair treatment for ethnic minorities? After all we've taken the opposite side in Israel, we came down hard and violently against the rather small Black Separatist movement here in the 1960's and there can't be anybody who hasn't heard of the bloody suppression of a Southern separatist movement in the 1860's. And then there were the Indian wars. There was the brutal supression of the labor movement in tth 1930's, brutal supression of anti- Vietnam war protesters and enough more to suggest that we're living in a glass house.
We concoct stories of Mexican separatism to scare children and Republicans and to support arguments for ethnic cleansing, yet we allow freedom of speech protection to White Separatists and Alaskan Separatists. I could go on, but it's easier to ask what the US would do if Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were to ask to secede, taking all the mineral and oil resources with them for ethnic and religious reasons. I think you know the answer.
Are we going to tell ourselves we support the Uighurs while a good part of America writes me e-mails demanding that "we" throw the Muslims out of the US? While we won't accept Uighurs we've falsely accused and jailed and abused because we are afraid of them?
Sure, China is trying hard to suppress news coverage. Heard much first hand coverage from Afghanistan lately or from any of the provinces where we're bombing and killing civilians every day in Pakistan? Were you accused of being a terrorist supporter or accomplice for questioning the WMD idea or the destruction of a neutral country? Many of us were, yet here we are, China bashing with tarnished halos and blood on our wings.
How many countries, including our own, treat separatist, secessionist movements without violence? How many can claim fair treatment for ethnic minorities? After all we've taken the opposite side in Israel, we came down hard and violently against the rather small Black Separatist movement here in the 1960's and there can't be anybody who hasn't heard of the bloody suppression of a Southern separatist movement in the 1860's. And then there were the Indian wars. There was the brutal supression of the labor movement in tth 1930's, brutal supression of anti- Vietnam war protesters and enough more to suggest that we're living in a glass house.
We concoct stories of Mexican separatism to scare children and Republicans and to support arguments for ethnic cleansing, yet we allow freedom of speech protection to White Separatists and Alaskan Separatists. I could go on, but it's easier to ask what the US would do if Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were to ask to secede, taking all the mineral and oil resources with them for ethnic and religious reasons. I think you know the answer.
Are we going to tell ourselves we support the Uighurs while a good part of America writes me e-mails demanding that "we" throw the Muslims out of the US? While we won't accept Uighurs we've falsely accused and jailed and abused because we are afraid of them?
Sure, China is trying hard to suppress news coverage. Heard much first hand coverage from Afghanistan lately or from any of the provinces where we're bombing and killing civilians every day in Pakistan? Were you accused of being a terrorist supporter or accomplice for questioning the WMD idea or the destruction of a neutral country? Many of us were, yet here we are, China bashing with tarnished halos and blood on our wings.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
With love, from Denver.
Michelle Obama loves this country. She made that clear last night, as she was obliged to do. Anyone associated with a candidate needs to appear infatuated with the United States, after all; needs to be seen as being of the opinion that no other country on Earth could have offered them what the US has offered them.
A candidate, or a spokesman for a candidate, needs to stay away from the obvious fact that the lives of many people have been limited, ruined or indeed ended by the government in its official capacity or by its tolerance toward those who have institutionalized injustice in the name of "consrvative" philosophies. Criticizing our history or the people who made it can and will be seen as "American bashing" or as "blaming America for everything." That sort of thing has been an effective barrier, keeping truth out of patriotism far better than any tin fence ever kept Mexicans out of New Mexico.
AP tells us this morning about Americans arrested for protesting against China's annexation of Tibet. They weren't treated with a comfy chair, needless to say, but from the moral heights at which we view such things, it's easy to forget how Americans have been treated for the same thing right here -- or at least in Chicago. Pictures of Police throwing citizens off highway overpasses, into bodies of water; pictures of police dragging people from busses by the hair and clubbing them don't often appear in the press any more and only old timers like me remember when others brag about our "Freedoms." I remember the commedian and political commentator Dick Gregory being arrested off the street and thrown in jail for simply walking toward the Democratic convention. I remember a photographer being thrown to the ground and having her camera smashed for photographing the felonies of the police. I remember columns of National Guard coming down State Street simply because there were protests and being afraid to go out of my home for fear of the police. What about the small town mayor and his mother, roughed up, hog tied and thrown face down in a puddle of dog blood by police dedicated to protecting our "freedom." That didn't happen in China.
I could spend all day about the persecution of Americans who once read Marx or who were simply suspected of it. I could lament that Navahos aren't allowed to use the water that runs through what's supposed to be their land. I could spend the rest of my life railing about the Genocidal deportations of the Indians, the enslavement of Africans and the hundred years of persecution that followed their emancipation. I could talk about the hangings in Chicago of people who were present at a rally for an 8 hour work week. I could scream about the abuses of civil rights in our "wars" against pornography and marijuana and even against Islamic literature. I won't. You are either already aware of America's dirty laundry or you refuse to be aware lest it tarnish your patriotism.
But of course acknowledging some of the dark horrors of American history and current events is not the way to get elected. You have to be mindlessly rapturous about the unique and unsullied freedom we pretend to enjoy -- or else. Michelle has to seem wildly greatful for what the country has promised as an inalienable right to everyone and has denied to a great many. She has to pretend that protest is never censured, that people aren't beaten and tortured without the protection of the law and that it's always been that way. She has to pretend not only that she's always been proud of every thing this country has done, but that at all moments she is and has been proud to the maximum level. We've seen the negative consequences of her saying that she was now more proud than before.
All this is far more important than knowledge of trade policies, the capacity for diplomacy and negotiation, the understanding of economic and monitary policy, a true willingness to follow the dictates of law and a renunciation of the thirst for conquest so absent in our current government.
She needs to appear to be grateful to "the man" for what were supposed to be the natural and inalienable rights guaranteed by the constitution and so long thwarted by "conservatives."
I've often been - have usually been in fact, ashamed of one aspect or another of this country for as long as I've been old enough to feel shame. Anyone who hasn't is no kind of patriot, nor is patriotism in itself a virtue. Shame motivates change. Shame is the result of having a sense of morality. Ask anyone who has raised children. Without a sense of shame, and the honesty to acknowledge responsibility for what we have done or allowed to be done, patriotism is just another pagent of dishonesty and self congratulation and the midwife to half the evils of the world.
Is this all a simple minded diatribe? You bet, but I'm talking to America, not to the Princeton philosophy department. I'm talking to a country as dishonest and ignorant about itself as it is about other countries. Dont' get me wrong, Michelle Obama seems to be intelligent, virtuous and open and would be with or without the obligatory blue collar, log cabin background. Indeed she's a huge relief from the slithery, cynical, chip on the shoulder personnas we're used to from other candidates' spouses. What I need to hear from her husband, however, isn't how he just loves, loves, loves America, but about how we've mortgaged our freedom to wage fraudulent wars, about how we've been sold economic policies that have failed every test for the benefit of a quasi-feudal elite; about how we've been sold colonialism, jingoism and fraudulent economic policies, sugar coated with patriotism -- and how he's going to help end this shameful state of affairs without undue concern with the effect on corporate sacred cows. I don't need to hear about the hard time he had in life or the easy one. I wan't to see his ability to inspire us to altruism and to understand a complex world. I don't care about his "faith" or whether he has the flag tattooted on his rump, but I'm betting that no matter how dedicated he may be to improving our nation, this is just what we're going to hear from Denver.
I hope I'm wrong.
A candidate, or a spokesman for a candidate, needs to stay away from the obvious fact that the lives of many people have been limited, ruined or indeed ended by the government in its official capacity or by its tolerance toward those who have institutionalized injustice in the name of "consrvative" philosophies. Criticizing our history or the people who made it can and will be seen as "American bashing" or as "blaming America for everything." That sort of thing has been an effective barrier, keeping truth out of patriotism far better than any tin fence ever kept Mexicans out of New Mexico.
AP tells us this morning about Americans arrested for protesting against China's annexation of Tibet. They weren't treated with a comfy chair, needless to say, but from the moral heights at which we view such things, it's easy to forget how Americans have been treated for the same thing right here -- or at least in Chicago. Pictures of Police throwing citizens off highway overpasses, into bodies of water; pictures of police dragging people from busses by the hair and clubbing them don't often appear in the press any more and only old timers like me remember when others brag about our "Freedoms." I remember the commedian and political commentator Dick Gregory being arrested off the street and thrown in jail for simply walking toward the Democratic convention. I remember a photographer being thrown to the ground and having her camera smashed for photographing the felonies of the police. I remember columns of National Guard coming down State Street simply because there were protests and being afraid to go out of my home for fear of the police. What about the small town mayor and his mother, roughed up, hog tied and thrown face down in a puddle of dog blood by police dedicated to protecting our "freedom." That didn't happen in China.
I could spend all day about the persecution of Americans who once read Marx or who were simply suspected of it. I could lament that Navahos aren't allowed to use the water that runs through what's supposed to be their land. I could spend the rest of my life railing about the Genocidal deportations of the Indians, the enslavement of Africans and the hundred years of persecution that followed their emancipation. I could talk about the hangings in Chicago of people who were present at a rally for an 8 hour work week. I could scream about the abuses of civil rights in our "wars" against pornography and marijuana and even against Islamic literature. I won't. You are either already aware of America's dirty laundry or you refuse to be aware lest it tarnish your patriotism.
But of course acknowledging some of the dark horrors of American history and current events is not the way to get elected. You have to be mindlessly rapturous about the unique and unsullied freedom we pretend to enjoy -- or else. Michelle has to seem wildly greatful for what the country has promised as an inalienable right to everyone and has denied to a great many. She has to pretend that protest is never censured, that people aren't beaten and tortured without the protection of the law and that it's always been that way. She has to pretend not only that she's always been proud of every thing this country has done, but that at all moments she is and has been proud to the maximum level. We've seen the negative consequences of her saying that she was now more proud than before.
All this is far more important than knowledge of trade policies, the capacity for diplomacy and negotiation, the understanding of economic and monitary policy, a true willingness to follow the dictates of law and a renunciation of the thirst for conquest so absent in our current government.
She needs to appear to be grateful to "the man" for what were supposed to be the natural and inalienable rights guaranteed by the constitution and so long thwarted by "conservatives."
I've often been - have usually been in fact, ashamed of one aspect or another of this country for as long as I've been old enough to feel shame. Anyone who hasn't is no kind of patriot, nor is patriotism in itself a virtue. Shame motivates change. Shame is the result of having a sense of morality. Ask anyone who has raised children. Without a sense of shame, and the honesty to acknowledge responsibility for what we have done or allowed to be done, patriotism is just another pagent of dishonesty and self congratulation and the midwife to half the evils of the world.
Is this all a simple minded diatribe? You bet, but I'm talking to America, not to the Princeton philosophy department. I'm talking to a country as dishonest and ignorant about itself as it is about other countries. Dont' get me wrong, Michelle Obama seems to be intelligent, virtuous and open and would be with or without the obligatory blue collar, log cabin background. Indeed she's a huge relief from the slithery, cynical, chip on the shoulder personnas we're used to from other candidates' spouses. What I need to hear from her husband, however, isn't how he just loves, loves, loves America, but about how we've mortgaged our freedom to wage fraudulent wars, about how we've been sold economic policies that have failed every test for the benefit of a quasi-feudal elite; about how we've been sold colonialism, jingoism and fraudulent economic policies, sugar coated with patriotism -- and how he's going to help end this shameful state of affairs without undue concern with the effect on corporate sacred cows. I don't need to hear about the hard time he had in life or the easy one. I wan't to see his ability to inspire us to altruism and to understand a complex world. I don't care about his "faith" or whether he has the flag tattooted on his rump, but I'm betting that no matter how dedicated he may be to improving our nation, this is just what we're going to hear from Denver.
I hope I'm wrong.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Gods, flags and idiots
Expatbrian over at The Impolitic points out that George Bush, while attending the Swimming finals at the Beijing Olympics, held up the US flag -- backwards. I have to disagree that we will be hearing a lot about this, but I'm still getting the viral e-mails about how Obama-the-Muslim-terrorist hates the flag.
George of course is over there making a fuss about religion and how uplifting it is to worship God. Outside the Kuanjie Protestant church, George who obviously knows nothing or less than nothing about the long religious history of China declared that
Of course Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, religions not really concerned with the kind of gods Christians imagine, and certainly not accepting of the universality of Yahweh whether in the original version or the Romanized impregnator of virgins are still very much active and the temples are packed, to which I can testify. There are millions and millions of Muslims in China. I once spent a magical and yes, uplifting afternoon in the ancient Xi'an Mosque. Christianity is still present as a minority religion and I know a number of Chinese Catholics personally, but When George talks about religious freedom, I'm not sure he doesn't mean the same kind of Christianist domination he dreams about for the United States. I'm quite sure they are aware of our history of exploitation under the name of George's God-O-Love and want no part of it ever again.
George of course is over there making a fuss about religion and how uplifting it is to worship God. Outside the Kuanjie Protestant church, George who obviously knows nothing or less than nothing about the long religious history of China declared that
"it just goes to show that God is universal, God is love and no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion."Come to think of it, he seems to know less than nothing about the Crusades, the Inquisition and 1500 years of war, conquest, genocide and murderous persecution by European followers of Jesus the Love-God. I'm sure that like most Americans, he knows nothing about the Opium wars either and about how China was forced to accept bibles and narcotics from missionaries, immune from Chinese law and backed by Christian military might. Everyone in China is still quite aware and more than a bit cynical about the benefits of having foreign controlled religions running amok in their ancient land.
Of course Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, religions not really concerned with the kind of gods Christians imagine, and certainly not accepting of the universality of Yahweh whether in the original version or the Romanized impregnator of virgins are still very much active and the temples are packed, to which I can testify. There are millions and millions of Muslims in China. I once spent a magical and yes, uplifting afternoon in the ancient Xi'an Mosque. Christianity is still present as a minority religion and I know a number of Chinese Catholics personally, but When George talks about religious freedom, I'm not sure he doesn't mean the same kind of Christianist domination he dreams about for the United States. I'm quite sure they are aware of our history of exploitation under the name of George's God-O-Love and want no part of it ever again.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Don't we look foolish enough already?
I don't think I want to watch the Olympics this year. It's not that this iteration of the games will be any more or less boring or fulsomely nationalistic than the event ever has been, but I'm afraid that some self-appointed ambassadors are going to make damn fools and hypocrites of us.
My first reaction was "tell me it's a joke" when I read the Reuters item telling us that an unspecified group of "human rights activists" have asked George W. Bush to complain to the Chinese government about political prisoners while he is there, and to wear a wristband that declares: "free the North Koreans." They intend to show up under full sail in Beijing wearing their version of the trendy rubber band rhetoric. I can almost hear the jeers.
Tell me it's a joke.
According to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, Bush will not be taking wristbands with him. I'm glad to hear it. Another thing George will not be taking with him on the trip is moral authority; or indeed anything else that gives him the right to demand that China not expel illegal aliens coming across the Korean Border looking for work, or that they release militant Islamic separatists, much less to extend them anything resembling the right to Habeas Corpus.
It's not that no criticism is due, it's that we are in no position to make it. I can well imagine my own feelings should a Chinese delegation show up here demanding that we free Puerto Rico, close Guantanamo and open the border with Mexico.
I mean, it's really a joke, isn't it?
My first reaction was "tell me it's a joke" when I read the Reuters item telling us that an unspecified group of "human rights activists" have asked George W. Bush to complain to the Chinese government about political prisoners while he is there, and to wear a wristband that declares: "free the North Koreans." They intend to show up under full sail in Beijing wearing their version of the trendy rubber band rhetoric. I can almost hear the jeers.
Tell me it's a joke.
According to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, Bush will not be taking wristbands with him. I'm glad to hear it. Another thing George will not be taking with him on the trip is moral authority; or indeed anything else that gives him the right to demand that China not expel illegal aliens coming across the Korean Border looking for work, or that they release militant Islamic separatists, much less to extend them anything resembling the right to Habeas Corpus.
It's not that no criticism is due, it's that we are in no position to make it. I can well imagine my own feelings should a Chinese delegation show up here demanding that we free Puerto Rico, close Guantanamo and open the border with Mexico.
I mean, it's really a joke, isn't it?
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The view from Olympus
I've long thought that the Olympic games differ from other professional sports events mostly in that they exploit the athletes with a quasi-religious fervor, rather than paying them. The idea of "amateur" competition, as I see it, was a pretense used to keep working class people out of games meant for Edwardian gentlemen of leisure and inclination toward neo-classical, cthonic re-enactments. Of course today's contestants are scarcely that and hardly amateur, and they're there mostly to demonstrate the athletic prowess and by some atavistic extension the political status of their countries.
Despite the puzzling, faux-pagan Hellenic torch-running ceremonies, it's about politics and not about re-enacting ancient religious ceremonies of body worship and warrior training. So it's no surprise that Jonathan Alter writing in the current Newsweek would presume to use the opening ceremonies as a platform for chastising China. It's too bad for him however, that we're not sitting on Olympus but in the laughing stocks and pillories of the world.
Yes, China could do something about Darfur, but criticism should come from a source not so well associated with supporting monsters and tyrants for our own causes as we are; a source not preening over "shock and awe" terrorism, the slaughter and displacement of millions, the toppling of democracies and a source second only to China in number of incarcerated and executed citizens.
It's all too easy for someone like Alter to pretend that Tibet was a free and independent nation after the 13th century or that the quasi-Buddhist religion that stifled, enslaved and impoverished Tibet and kept it in a state of stupendous ignorance and isolation for centuries was benign, but a country with a history like ours can only succeed in looking arrogant and hypocritical in justifying torture of terrorists while condemning it abroad. Imagine our reaction to China's bellowing at us for occupying and suppressing Puerto Rico and Iraq; our interference in Central and South America, Asia and even Iran. Imagine the giggles at China's biggest client state preaching about its "Global Irresponsibility."
Maybe it's time we just shut up for once and let someone else use the pulpit. Maybe if we want to influence that country we should end the buying and outsourcing spree. Maybe if we want to continue blowing hard about morality we should try practicing it.
Despite the puzzling, faux-pagan Hellenic torch-running ceremonies, it's about politics and not about re-enacting ancient religious ceremonies of body worship and warrior training. So it's no surprise that Jonathan Alter writing in the current Newsweek would presume to use the opening ceremonies as a platform for chastising China. It's too bad for him however, that we're not sitting on Olympus but in the laughing stocks and pillories of the world.
Yes, China could do something about Darfur, but criticism should come from a source not so well associated with supporting monsters and tyrants for our own causes as we are; a source not preening over "shock and awe" terrorism, the slaughter and displacement of millions, the toppling of democracies and a source second only to China in number of incarcerated and executed citizens.
It's all too easy for someone like Alter to pretend that Tibet was a free and independent nation after the 13th century or that the quasi-Buddhist religion that stifled, enslaved and impoverished Tibet and kept it in a state of stupendous ignorance and isolation for centuries was benign, but a country with a history like ours can only succeed in looking arrogant and hypocritical in justifying torture of terrorists while condemning it abroad. Imagine our reaction to China's bellowing at us for occupying and suppressing Puerto Rico and Iraq; our interference in Central and South America, Asia and even Iran. Imagine the giggles at China's biggest client state preaching about its "Global Irresponsibility."
Maybe it's time we just shut up for once and let someone else use the pulpit. Maybe if we want to influence that country we should end the buying and outsourcing spree. Maybe if we want to continue blowing hard about morality we should try practicing it.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Let's medal and not meddle
"Can we really send our athletes to compete in a country that tortures its own citizens merely for expressing political thoughts? That has enabled the Darfur genocide by supplying weapons to Sudan?"asks an editorial in The New Republic. (10/22/07) The country in question is of course, China, which soon will host the 2008 Olympic Games. It almost makes one nostalgic for a time when the US had enough moral standing to be able to ask that kind of question without risk of seismic damage caused by worldwide jaw dropping.
Yes, as the article points out, political protest is often treated brutally in China. China often supports brutal dictatorships. Those who blow whistles and expose or protest corruption or in one case, start a petition against the Beijing games, are treated brutally; sent to prisons where prisoners have to carry out humiliating tasks and are forced to endure uncomfortable positions. It's called "subverting State Power" and sadly, the US has any number of proponents for the same kind of thing. You can read about it every day in letters to editors, hear it expressed in barber shops and bars and hear it on Fox News. Our human rights are eroding along with the polar ice caps and our record of support for barbaric regimes is well known.
Of course it's worse in China, but "enhanced" interrogation, disappearances, denial of council, denial of Habeas Corpus, domestic surveillance and extended "detention" of people the government is suspicious of are now firmly identified with the US in the mind of the world. Valerie Plame wasn't chained to an iron cot for embarrassing the Bush administration, but official power was used to punish her for that embarrassment and it wasn't an isolated case.
The New Republic would have us use the Olympics for it's primary value; a way for nations to insult and humiliate each other while pretending to be resurrecting an ancient Greek body worship cult. They're advocating more than athletic victory however; their proposal is for our athletes deliberately to be insulting toward their host and overtly support the subversion of China's government.
"Chinese-language banners unfurled by athletes at the opening ceremonies that call for the government to permit free speech, t-shirts slipped on during medal ceremonies that carry messages of solidarity with Chinese dissidents--these gestures could reach tens of thousands of spectators and, through word of mouth, many more."
Right -- and allow the long litany of American offenses: the wars of aggression, the torture, the kidnappings, the destruction of a country that had not attacked us and slaughter of it's citizens to be broadcast throughout the world to a chorus of laughter. Let's allow our athletes to be booed, jeered and shunned. It doesn't matter that we can rationalize our having become the ogre we are because the world does not believe in us any longer even when we are right. Yes, the Olympic games have always been a theater of nationalism and propaganda, but this time perhaps it's better simply to treat it as an athletic event lest we have our noses rubbed in our own mess.
Friday, August 31, 2007
No spring chicken
I've commented elsewhere about the tendency of local restaurants serving Coryphaenidae hippurus or Dolphin, a favorite locally caught Atlantic fish, to use the amusingly inappropriate Hawaiian name of Mahi-Mahi so that the timid tourists from New Jersey won't think they're being served one of those cute mammals.
China, which already has a partially deserved reputation for restaurant menus suggestive of the local zoo's inventory list, is afraid of a bigger problem emerging during the 2008 Olympic games; a much bigger problem than the US has with Chinese tourists suspecting canine origins of the hot dogs they see everywhere. Xinhua, the State News agency of China says that the "confusing, even ridiculous translations" found on menus are on the way out and that The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of 2,753 dishes and drinks that are to be revised. No more items that "either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding of China's diet habits" please.
Don't tell the foreigners their chicken was a virgin or that the meatball wrapped in cabbage leaves is a lion's head. That sweet pudding-like dòufǔ naǒ I enjoy for breakfast? For heaven's sake, don't call it bean curd brains; they tend to believe anything, you know.
China, which already has a partially deserved reputation for restaurant menus suggestive of the local zoo's inventory list, is afraid of a bigger problem emerging during the 2008 Olympic games; a much bigger problem than the US has with Chinese tourists suspecting canine origins of the hot dogs they see everywhere. Xinhua, the State News agency of China says that the "confusing, even ridiculous translations" found on menus are on the way out and that The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of 2,753 dishes and drinks that are to be revised. No more items that "either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding of China's diet habits" please.
Don't tell the foreigners their chicken was a virgin or that the meatball wrapped in cabbage leaves is a lion's head. That sweet pudding-like dòufǔ naǒ I enjoy for breakfast? For heaven's sake, don't call it bean curd brains; they tend to believe anything, you know.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Poison food from. . .
Am I beating this story to death? Yes, I am because it deserves to die. Metz Fresh LLC of King City, California has recalled over 8000 cases of bagged fresh spinach after Salmonella contamination was discovered. This comes about a year after a similar case involving bagged spinach from California and in spite of allegedly improved precautions.
About 40,000 people get sick from this bacteria commonly found in American produced chicken and eggs and vegetables. That's about 40,000 more than have been made sick by Chinese fish or Mattel toys with faint traces of lead in the paint.
Obviously we should boycott everything coming from California.
About 40,000 people get sick from this bacteria commonly found in American produced chicken and eggs and vegetables. That's about 40,000 more than have been made sick by Chinese fish or Mattel toys with faint traces of lead in the paint.
Obviously we should boycott everything coming from California.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
A year without America
Looks like you can't trust the Americans or their cheap products. A defect in a China Airlines Boeing 737 caused the massive fire that narrowly missed killing hundreds of people who were saved only because of the quick action of the well trained Chinese air crew. Although I 'm sure the responsible CEO will be taken out and shot immediately, the way they do in China, it's not enough. America as a whole should be punished. An embargo against all American products should be put in place until everyone can be sure that Greedy Americans have stopped putting profit ahead of safety.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Yellow Peril part II
NBC news calmly announced last night that two brands of packaged baby carrots contained an extremely nasty bacteria called Shigella. As far as I know, even Lou Dobbs has not been calling for a retaliatory strike against Mexico. Such recalls are common enough and the most frequently tainted products are certainly not exclusively imports. Last summer's packaged spinach recall involved California grown produce, February's Peter Pan Peanut Butter Salmonella surprise didn't involve imports and of course tainted ground domestic beef seems frequently to be in the news. Clearly better inspection of foodstuffs would not be a bad idea. Of course we're not talking about imports from the designated scapegoat - China, or as Lou calls the largest bastion of swashbuckling capitalism: Communist China.
E-mails were pouring into Lou Dobbs' newsroom this week when someone in Indiana claimed her dog got sick on made in China Wal-Mart dog treats. The consensus was that we had to punish, not the manufacturer, but the 1,300,000,000 people of China for making "shoddy" products. Of course it's doubtful that we will get any "never minds" from the hysteria vendors and the public will, for the most part, not read any headlines mentioning that tests showed the dog treats to be free of contaminants.
Could it be that the inspiration for the "shoddy Chinese product" meme bears some relation to the panic much of the world feels at being unable to compete with this enormous producer of sophisticated electronics and technology? Joe consumer seems uneasy with the cheap appliances and tools and clothing he sees on the shelf, but is probably less familiar with the Chinese Space program, nuclear submarines, communications satellites and computer technology and components that make Japan and the US nervous. I wonder if that meme will meet the same fate as the one I remember as a child right after WW II, of shoddy Japanese products made by little bucktoothed and simian featured Japanese people.
E-mails were pouring into Lou Dobbs' newsroom this week when someone in Indiana claimed her dog got sick on made in China Wal-Mart dog treats. The consensus was that we had to punish, not the manufacturer, but the 1,300,000,000 people of China for making "shoddy" products. Of course it's doubtful that we will get any "never minds" from the hysteria vendors and the public will, for the most part, not read any headlines mentioning that tests showed the dog treats to be free of contaminants.
Could it be that the inspiration for the "shoddy Chinese product" meme bears some relation to the panic much of the world feels at being unable to compete with this enormous producer of sophisticated electronics and technology? Joe consumer seems uneasy with the cheap appliances and tools and clothing he sees on the shelf, but is probably less familiar with the Chinese Space program, nuclear submarines, communications satellites and computer technology and components that make Japan and the US nervous. I wonder if that meme will meet the same fate as the one I remember as a child right after WW II, of shoddy Japanese products made by little bucktoothed and simian featured Japanese people.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Yellow Peril
The line between hyperbole and slander may be hazy, but it is there and it is regularly crossed. The USA, being in dire need of external enemies that can be used to distract us from the self destruction we're engaged in, is far from scrupulous when it comes to accurately portraying that vast and growing country upon which we have become heavily dependent: China, or as Lou Dobbs loves to call that authoritarian capitalist nation in order to invoke those dear dead cold war days, Communist China.
Today's New York Times gives us three inflammatory cartoons. One shows a giant and horrifying dragon in the form of a jack-in-the-box toy looming over two terrified children and with a caption reading "Chinese business ethics." Another shows a man trying to commit suicide by playing with a "made in China" toy and a third is a scene of smiling Chinese workers, some in Mao hats, making poison filled toys. It's titled Santa's Little Helpers.
Dangerous toys used to be a pet theme amongst left-leaning Americans in the last century. Television specials, holiday horror stories and endless Saturday Night Live skits portrayed unscrupulous and greedy capitalists as child murderers, but in our new Corporatocracy, it's been turned around with the help of hyperbole and hysteria and some good old fashioned xenophobic lying. It doesn't matter that the levels of lead we're talking about would only be dangerous if your child were to eat Thomas the Tank Engine for breakfast every morning for years and it doesn't matter that domestic food is as likely or more likely to be contaminated as is Chinese fish, it's so much more fun to externalize the dark side of unregulated capitalism then to face it.
In fact, the problems with Chinese goods have been due to that country's explosion into crony capitalism and our country's relapse into crony capitalism where regulatory agencies are seen as the enemy not the protector of the consumer and staffed with republican hacks. That doesn't stop cartoonists from depicting thirteen hundred million people as evil, Fu Manchu inspired enemies without "business ethics" while neglecting to note that the Asiatic entrepreneurs who cut corners or who were duped into buying tainted commodities by other unscrupulous entrepreneurs have either been shot in the back of the head by the Chinese justice system or killed themselves before facing the firing squad, whilst those charged with protecting the American public rarely face any consequences at all.
Interviews of the thousands of Chinese workers now out of a job and furious at their greedy employers and their incompetent regulatory agencies aren't as satisfying to our bigotry as racist cartoons or moldy old references to Communism and the Yellow Peril. When your Sony goes dark and is unrepairable the day after the warranty ends, you usually blame Sony, not the Japanese people. You don't make grotesque cartoons of sneaky Japanese workers plotting to ruin your day. We've learned that such things aren't socially acceptable, but that still doesn't apply to China. Some company makes a fast buck from substituting Glycol for glycerin and it's just fine to draw pigtailed bucktoothed caricatures of The Chinese.
Nobody in the US blamed American workers or capitalism itself when Ford Explorers shredded their right rear tires and went out of control into roadside ditches or when Ford Pintos blew up when hit from behind or when Tylenol started appearing with cyanide in it or when massive quantities of foodstuffs tainted with mercury, salmonella and e-coli endangered the public health, or when some diet drug or arthritis drug or diabetes drug gave you a heart attack. We wouldn't laugh at cartoons showing Americans smiling while putting Vioxx into bottles with skull and crossbones on them. Just keep laughing and remember when hiding your head in the sand, to keep your eyes closed.
Today's New York Times gives us three inflammatory cartoons. One shows a giant and horrifying dragon in the form of a jack-in-the-box toy looming over two terrified children and with a caption reading "Chinese business ethics." Another shows a man trying to commit suicide by playing with a "made in China" toy and a third is a scene of smiling Chinese workers, some in Mao hats, making poison filled toys. It's titled Santa's Little Helpers.
Dangerous toys used to be a pet theme amongst left-leaning Americans in the last century. Television specials, holiday horror stories and endless Saturday Night Live skits portrayed unscrupulous and greedy capitalists as child murderers, but in our new Corporatocracy, it's been turned around with the help of hyperbole and hysteria and some good old fashioned xenophobic lying. It doesn't matter that the levels of lead we're talking about would only be dangerous if your child were to eat Thomas the Tank Engine for breakfast every morning for years and it doesn't matter that domestic food is as likely or more likely to be contaminated as is Chinese fish, it's so much more fun to externalize the dark side of unregulated capitalism then to face it.
In fact, the problems with Chinese goods have been due to that country's explosion into crony capitalism and our country's relapse into crony capitalism where regulatory agencies are seen as the enemy not the protector of the consumer and staffed with republican hacks. That doesn't stop cartoonists from depicting thirteen hundred million people as evil, Fu Manchu inspired enemies without "business ethics" while neglecting to note that the Asiatic entrepreneurs who cut corners or who were duped into buying tainted commodities by other unscrupulous entrepreneurs have either been shot in the back of the head by the Chinese justice system or killed themselves before facing the firing squad, whilst those charged with protecting the American public rarely face any consequences at all.
Interviews of the thousands of Chinese workers now out of a job and furious at their greedy employers and their incompetent regulatory agencies aren't as satisfying to our bigotry as racist cartoons or moldy old references to Communism and the Yellow Peril. When your Sony goes dark and is unrepairable the day after the warranty ends, you usually blame Sony, not the Japanese people. You don't make grotesque cartoons of sneaky Japanese workers plotting to ruin your day. We've learned that such things aren't socially acceptable, but that still doesn't apply to China. Some company makes a fast buck from substituting Glycol for glycerin and it's just fine to draw pigtailed bucktoothed caricatures of The Chinese.
Nobody in the US blamed American workers or capitalism itself when Ford Explorers shredded their right rear tires and went out of control into roadside ditches or when Ford Pintos blew up when hit from behind or when Tylenol started appearing with cyanide in it or when massive quantities of foodstuffs tainted with mercury, salmonella and e-coli endangered the public health, or when some diet drug or arthritis drug or diabetes drug gave you a heart attack. We wouldn't laugh at cartoons showing Americans smiling while putting Vioxx into bottles with skull and crossbones on them. Just keep laughing and remember when hiding your head in the sand, to keep your eyes closed.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Year without China
One of the least charming things about Americans is the dog-like way we respond to the signals of our trainers. A word or gesture or toot on the dog whistle and we go after the designated enemy with all the eager bravado our little brains are capable of. Of a sudden we have an urgent desire to fetch that stick or rip that throat and rarely stop to ask whose needs we are responding to.
Of a sudden we have cartoons everywhere portraying Chinese food as poison and Chinese goods as dangerous. Some street vendor out of millions of street vendors in a place we couldn't find on a map add chopped cardboard to his dumpling filling and we know and care about that while ignoring the diner in Arkansas that puts sawdust in the sausage. The FDA finds things in farmed fish that might, after many years of eating it, possibly be detrimental, but we're not sure and we panic more then we do when we read several times a year about millions of pounds of tainted hamburger. Some toys are found that have some unspecified amount of lead in the paint and no incidents of harm and we panic. Some crook in china looked the other way when someone sold anti-freeze as glycerin and let melamine into some dog food. He was shot for it the other day, but China is now an enemy - the enemy of our economy and out health - although it accounts for about 15% of our imports.
Somehow when hundreds die from bad hamburger or spinach or peanut butter, when a restaurant chain sells a burger that's nearly 100% filler, when hundreds of thousands of cars and tires are recalled for safety concerns, when thousands of toys are pulled off the market because some kid could stick it in his ear we don't think about war with Germany or Japan or Korea whence we import huge amounts of stuff or with California or Kansas. Domestic fish, farmed and wild, contain industrial pollutants. Tap water in some places is unsafe. Domestic Chicken, beef and milk contain residues from hormones and pesticides and perhaps antibiotics. As a nation we don't care that much or feel terribly unsafe, even though people die from domestic products.
many people have died from defective Fords - we don't boycott Michigan products. Firestone built a tire that failed too often when abused - we didn't declare war on them or on Japan nor did we write books about a year without "made in Japan" much less any of the other countries we import food and manufactured goods from.
In fact we prefer imported good and we have for a long time. Whether it's California wine or Detroit automobiles, we will spend more for the imports even when they are demonstrably inferior or more dangerous. In my local grocery store, Mediterranean sea salt sells for more than Caribbean sea salt, even though the salt is identical. We will pay more for coffee with some fake foreign sounding name and a paninni is much more desirable than a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. Nearly all our decisions and most that we defend the most strenuously are based on pure prejudice and our prejudices often are plug and play items furnished us by others for their gain.
If someone now wants us to be really upset with China, but not upset with the countries we import more from, shouldn't someone ask why? Isn't it time we asked some questions of ourselves when we hear the dog whistle blow?
Of a sudden we have cartoons everywhere portraying Chinese food as poison and Chinese goods as dangerous. Some street vendor out of millions of street vendors in a place we couldn't find on a map add chopped cardboard to his dumpling filling and we know and care about that while ignoring the diner in Arkansas that puts sawdust in the sausage. The FDA finds things in farmed fish that might, after many years of eating it, possibly be detrimental, but we're not sure and we panic more then we do when we read several times a year about millions of pounds of tainted hamburger. Some toys are found that have some unspecified amount of lead in the paint and no incidents of harm and we panic. Some crook in china looked the other way when someone sold anti-freeze as glycerin and let melamine into some dog food. He was shot for it the other day, but China is now an enemy - the enemy of our economy and out health - although it accounts for about 15% of our imports.
Somehow when hundreds die from bad hamburger or spinach or peanut butter, when a restaurant chain sells a burger that's nearly 100% filler, when hundreds of thousands of cars and tires are recalled for safety concerns, when thousands of toys are pulled off the market because some kid could stick it in his ear we don't think about war with Germany or Japan or Korea whence we import huge amounts of stuff or with California or Kansas. Domestic fish, farmed and wild, contain industrial pollutants. Tap water in some places is unsafe. Domestic Chicken, beef and milk contain residues from hormones and pesticides and perhaps antibiotics. As a nation we don't care that much or feel terribly unsafe, even though people die from domestic products.
many people have died from defective Fords - we don't boycott Michigan products. Firestone built a tire that failed too often when abused - we didn't declare war on them or on Japan nor did we write books about a year without "made in Japan" much less any of the other countries we import food and manufactured goods from.
In fact we prefer imported good and we have for a long time. Whether it's California wine or Detroit automobiles, we will spend more for the imports even when they are demonstrably inferior or more dangerous. In my local grocery store, Mediterranean sea salt sells for more than Caribbean sea salt, even though the salt is identical. We will pay more for coffee with some fake foreign sounding name and a paninni is much more desirable than a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. Nearly all our decisions and most that we defend the most strenuously are based on pure prejudice and our prejudices often are plug and play items furnished us by others for their gain.
If someone now wants us to be really upset with China, but not upset with the countries we import more from, shouldn't someone ask why? Isn't it time we asked some questions of ourselves when we hear the dog whistle blow?
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Hoist by our own petard?
The Financial Times announces today that Chinese "armor piercing" ammunition is being used by the Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq. I'm almost surprised they didn't follow the government line as far as to substitute "al Qaeda" for insurgents.
I have become so accustomed to deceptive descriptions of arms and ammunition in the popular press that I usually ignore such terms as "armor piercing," "cop killer" and "military" but my real concern here is that the knee-jerk China bashing is obscuring the real problem of the international arms trade in which the US is a major participant, having supplied arms to the Middle East and other places of unrest for a long time. It's not unusual for a country to be attacked with weapons of it's own manufacture or that were made by an ally as, for example, Great Britain whose destroyer was sunk by a French Missile during the Falklands war. That incident did not result in a British assault on France, but then George Bush was not calling the shots as he is here, nor did Mrs Thatcher seek to expand that war on other fronts.
The US has sold arms to Iran and to Iraq as well as to dictators and warlords all over the world, many of whom sold them out the back door to more dangerous customers. It's a multinational problem but we are a factor in the problem and we are a country heavily influenced by the wants of the international military-industrial complex.
Until the major arms exporters, like the US, Russia, China, France and Israel decide to cooperate in making a serious effort to control arms proliferation, we will continue to be shot at by an international buffet of weaponry. Of course as the profits are so enormous, it's never going to happen.
I have become so accustomed to deceptive descriptions of arms and ammunition in the popular press that I usually ignore such terms as "armor piercing," "cop killer" and "military" but my real concern here is that the knee-jerk China bashing is obscuring the real problem of the international arms trade in which the US is a major participant, having supplied arms to the Middle East and other places of unrest for a long time. It's not unusual for a country to be attacked with weapons of it's own manufacture or that were made by an ally as, for example, Great Britain whose destroyer was sunk by a French Missile during the Falklands war. That incident did not result in a British assault on France, but then George Bush was not calling the shots as he is here, nor did Mrs Thatcher seek to expand that war on other fronts.
The US has sold arms to Iran and to Iraq as well as to dictators and warlords all over the world, many of whom sold them out the back door to more dangerous customers. It's a multinational problem but we are a factor in the problem and we are a country heavily influenced by the wants of the international military-industrial complex.
Until the major arms exporters, like the US, Russia, China, France and Israel decide to cooperate in making a serious effort to control arms proliferation, we will continue to be shot at by an international buffet of weaponry. Of course as the profits are so enormous, it's never going to happen.
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