There’s a sense of alarm I experience whenever I read about comments made by Rush Limbaugh. The latest is his criticism of First Lady Michelle Obama for her “Let’s Move” campaign, the White House Super Bowl menu, her eating ribs in Vail, Co, the fact that she wouldn’t make it as a Sports Illustrated cover, and her waistline which she hides by wearing belts above the waist. Mr. Limbaugh who was criticized for going too far and hitting below the belt, defends himself by suggesting people should look at pictures of Mrs. Obama. I confess it’s the same sense of alarm I felt when I read that 46 people were arrested in Zimbabwe for watching videos of the events in Egypt and Tunisia. It was a gathering arranged by a law professor for those who had no access to TV or cable but the government saw the meeting as an attempt to organize to overthrow Robert Mugabe. You might tell me that Zimbabwe is an instance of no first amendment rights; and if anything Mr. Limbaugh’s case is one of carrying them to new extremes. But my alarm is not based on the intricacies of the first amendment but on whether things that appear so far fetched when they happen somewhere else, couldn’t happen here. When I hear the depths to which Mr. Limbaugh can descend, it challenges my understanding of what could or couldn’t happen in our own country. Maybe Zimbabwe descended to political depths and Rush is taking us to cultural ones, but depths are depths no matter how we get there.
February 2011
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Not Either/Or
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently declared that multiculturalism has failed. When asked during a television interview about the policy advocating that societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious groups, he answered that the existing policy had been a failure. He isn’t the first to say this, other leaders or ex-leaders have said the same thing. Sarkozy clarified his position, “If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcomed in France.” How groups integrate and assimilate—or not—within societies which are not their own, has been the subject of academic study even longer than it has been that of political debate. In the last few years, however, the politicization of the issues has obscured the issues by tending to make them into either/or propositions or by oversimplifying their inherent complexities. In France, the U.S. or in any other country, the issue may not be whether or not multiculturalism has failed or succeeded, but how it has been implemented, applied, realized, put into action, understood, defined, mitigated or touted.
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No Choice But Hunger
I read about a woman in Bangladesh. The only thing she owns is the sari she is wearing. She has a son who is a drug addict and because the aid agencies classify her as having an able bodied family member—his addiction and his absence are not factored in in the way they evaluate the needy—she is not able to receive food aid. On days when she works she can eat. On those days she gives or shares her food with her grandson. When she cannot work they both have nothing. The woman’s plight was part of a story about the horrific choices the food aid agencies have to make these days. The economic crisis has meant that less countries are able to give and those who do tend to give less, which all adds up to the fact that food aid agencies have serious food shortages and are having to chose who they can help and who they cannot. One can only imagine the story of this woman multiplied by thousands not only in Bangladesh but also in other countries. Similarly one can have feelings for the aid workers faced with such heart breaking stories on a daily basis, forced as they are to engage in a kind of Sophie’s choice. And all the while a reader is humbled by the lives of those with no choice but hunger, and by the impossible task of aid-workers.