For the record, the front page, above-the-fold story in today's New York Times chronicled the terrorist attack on a hotel in Mali. So, progress?
*************
In other-ish news, members and supporters of Al Qaeda and ISIS are squabbling like Republicans and Democrats over which political party is superior. ISIS murders dozens in Paris, and Al Qaeda jeers the indiscriminate nature of the attacks; Al Qaeda, showing infinitely more restraint and decorum, attempts to weed out Muslims in its Mali killing spree, and no doubt ISIS rolls its collective eyes at the resulting minimized body count: Only twenty-something killed? You call that jihad? The bickering has reached such a point that one disgusted supporter tweeted a plaintive, can't-we-all-just-get-along message: “I just wish we could all be brothers again¬ argue."
Boys, boys, no need to fight: You're both a bunch of sociopathic barbarians.
*************
Speaking of sociopaths, Donald Trump is sort of backing off his call to create a national registry for Muslims. I don't see why. Sounds perfectly reasonable. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? We could keep it simple, too: Maybe just a little yellow crescent moon patch on the sleeve?
*************
Finally, let's end on a pleasant note. I just saw this commercial for Campbell's soup. I guess it's been out for awhile, but this is the first time I'd seen it--such are the perils of DVR'ing everything and fast-forwarding through commercials. Anyway, in the ad, two men take turns feeding soup to a toddler. As the first man brings the soup to the child's lips, he does his best Darth Vader interpretation, "Cooper, I AM your father." Then, the second man, also Vadering, says, "No, Cooper, I am your father." The image of an attractive gay couple raising an adorable child--and quoting "Star Wars," no less!--has predictably angered right-wing bluenoses, such as the activist "Million Moms" group, who fear the ad "normalizes" such an abhorrent lifestyle. Relax, Moms! The ad never explicitly states that the men are a gay couple: For all we know, the baby was conceived during a drunken three-way with the kid's coked out mother.
I'm here to help.
But I personally choose to think the ad does, in fact, "normalize" what to me has been perfectly normal for quite some time: The fact that same-sex couples are just as capable of being loving (if incredibly dorky) parents as their heterosexual counterparts. And maybe this commercial will help some people reach the same conclusion. So, progress.
I assume we are meant to conclude that this is a gay couple raising a child, and not that the child is the product of a drunken three-way.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
In Which We Experience 'That Moment When. . . '
People respond to tragedy in various ways. The Eiffel Tower forms the peace sign's inverted 'V' in countless Facebook profile pictures, while in others the picture remains as it was before the events of November 13, only now superimposed by a ghostly tricolor. #PrayforParis is a popular hashtag. Whatever helps.
Less benign, though, are those status updates that chastise people for the apparent hypocrisy in condemning the French attacks while remaining silent about (if not ignorant of) similar attacks in other parts of the world. They question why people pray for Paris but not Beirut, which suffered a major terrorist attack just one day earlier. They ascribe to callousness the Western world's lack of sufficient grief at an attack on a university in Kenya--which seems somewhat off-topic, as the event in question happened some six months ago and was, as I recall, covered quite extensively by any number of news outlets. But these people do certainly have a point: Western media in general devote exponentially more coverage to terrorist attacks against "First World" nations like France than they do to similar carnage in poorer places like Lebanon. I guess my question is, And so?
Don't get me wrong: Any victims of terrorism deserve outpourings of sympathy; any bloodthirsty zealots spilling innocent blood in the name of delusional causes deserve scorn. The French don't matter more than the Lebanese (or the Kenyan or the Chinese or the Australian). But there are any number of reasons why the American news media would focus more on what happens in France than on what happens in Beirut. Let's be honest: Walk up to a typical American--a good-hearted, caring, American--and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Lebanon," and that good-hearted person says, "Oh my God! That's horrible!" Walk up to that same American and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Paris," and that same good-hearted person says, "Oh my God! That's horrible! What happened? Tell me what happened!"
Is that right? Fair? Equitable? Maybe not. But it is human: We identify with people who are "like" us. The "typical" American--for better or worse--identifies more with France than with Lebanon or with Kenya. It doesn't mean we don't care. And frankly, the time to point out people's supposed "hypocrisy"--if, that is, you want to encourage more openheartedness--is not when those people are feeling understandably traumatized. "Your buddy just died in a car crash? Well, sure, that's sad, but what about the two-hundred civilians killed by Syrian airstrikes yesterday? Why aren't you crying for them?!?"
Back in July, Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, elicited scorn when, in response to the activist "Black Lives Matter" movement protesting police brutality against African-Americans, he remarked that "All lives matter." While the comment is undoubtedly right in a literal sense, it reflected a certain tone-deafness to the protesters' concerns. Of course all lives matter, but that wasn't the point at that moment for that audience: People who were processing traumatic events and expressing their grief and outrage about those events. I wonder if those expressing dismay at the lack of coverage of terrorism in Beirut, people whose general worldviews most likely mirror those of O'Malley's critics, realize that they just all-lives-mattered Paris.
And that's something I've noticed over the last few days: The way the events of last weekend have led to outbreaks of what can at best be called cognitive dissonance and at worst hypocrisy. I'm speaking of myself here, too. When I hear about France sealing its borders, or GOP hardliners calling hysterically for a ban on Syrian--or even Muslim--immigration to the United States, I roll my eyes and think, among other things, of how ridiculous such non-solutions are. After all, I think, what good will sealing borders do, as anyone bent on infiltrating the US to wreak terrorist havoc will surely find ways around whatever laws we put in place. . . . And then I realize that I am making exactly the same argument used by NRA sympathizers to pooh-pooh attempts to strengthen gun-control laws.
It's been said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Perhaps its also the wage extracted by events too terrible to rationalize.
Less benign, though, are those status updates that chastise people for the apparent hypocrisy in condemning the French attacks while remaining silent about (if not ignorant of) similar attacks in other parts of the world. They question why people pray for Paris but not Beirut, which suffered a major terrorist attack just one day earlier. They ascribe to callousness the Western world's lack of sufficient grief at an attack on a university in Kenya--which seems somewhat off-topic, as the event in question happened some six months ago and was, as I recall, covered quite extensively by any number of news outlets. But these people do certainly have a point: Western media in general devote exponentially more coverage to terrorist attacks against "First World" nations like France than they do to similar carnage in poorer places like Lebanon. I guess my question is, And so?
Don't get me wrong: Any victims of terrorism deserve outpourings of sympathy; any bloodthirsty zealots spilling innocent blood in the name of delusional causes deserve scorn. The French don't matter more than the Lebanese (or the Kenyan or the Chinese or the Australian). But there are any number of reasons why the American news media would focus more on what happens in France than on what happens in Beirut. Let's be honest: Walk up to a typical American--a good-hearted, caring, American--and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Lebanon," and that good-hearted person says, "Oh my God! That's horrible!" Walk up to that same American and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Paris," and that same good-hearted person says, "Oh my God! That's horrible! What happened? Tell me what happened!"
Is that right? Fair? Equitable? Maybe not. But it is human: We identify with people who are "like" us. The "typical" American--for better or worse--identifies more with France than with Lebanon or with Kenya. It doesn't mean we don't care. And frankly, the time to point out people's supposed "hypocrisy"--if, that is, you want to encourage more openheartedness--is not when those people are feeling understandably traumatized. "Your buddy just died in a car crash? Well, sure, that's sad, but what about the two-hundred civilians killed by Syrian airstrikes yesterday? Why aren't you crying for them?!?"
Back in July, Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, elicited scorn when, in response to the activist "Black Lives Matter" movement protesting police brutality against African-Americans, he remarked that "All lives matter." While the comment is undoubtedly right in a literal sense, it reflected a certain tone-deafness to the protesters' concerns. Of course all lives matter, but that wasn't the point at that moment for that audience: People who were processing traumatic events and expressing their grief and outrage about those events. I wonder if those expressing dismay at the lack of coverage of terrorism in Beirut, people whose general worldviews most likely mirror those of O'Malley's critics, realize that they just all-lives-mattered Paris.
And that's something I've noticed over the last few days: The way the events of last weekend have led to outbreaks of what can at best be called cognitive dissonance and at worst hypocrisy. I'm speaking of myself here, too. When I hear about France sealing its borders, or GOP hardliners calling hysterically for a ban on Syrian--or even Muslim--immigration to the United States, I roll my eyes and think, among other things, of how ridiculous such non-solutions are. After all, I think, what good will sealing borders do, as anyone bent on infiltrating the US to wreak terrorist havoc will surely find ways around whatever laws we put in place. . . . And then I realize that I am making exactly the same argument used by NRA sympathizers to pooh-pooh attempts to strengthen gun-control laws.
It's been said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Perhaps its also the wage extracted by events too terrible to rationalize.
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