August 2013 – Page 19

When Childhood Classics Aren’t Innocent, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader responds to the racist scene from Peter Pan:

A classic from my childhood is Holiday Inn. It’s a beautiful movie with Bing Crosby, the first movie he sang “White Christmas” in, and it also starts Fred Astaire. It has clever, hilarious, romantic, top-notch Irving Berlin numbers, fabulous dancing, and … a scene in blackface [watch an unembeddable version here]. The movie was played on TV constantly every holiday season when I was growing up, and AMC still plays it, but with the infamous scene cut. But the thing is, it’s a crucial plot device that moves the storyline, so there is a point where you literally have no idea what is going on. If that scene weren’t done the way it was, it would be up there today with It’s A Wonderful Life. Instead of Holiday Inn, we get stuck every year with that “classic” polished turd White Christmas! Why? Not racist.

If you want an amazing children’s book that has a brown, female protagonist and was written in 1939, read The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward to your kid for Easter next year.

If you think that scene from Holiday Inn is bad, watch this clip of Bing Crosby in blackface singing “Dixie” – Dixie! Update from a reader:

Let’s not forget the early Bing work with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, singing “Mississippi Mud” with the original lyrics: “the darkies beat their feet on the Mississippi Mud” rather than the later, non-offensive “the people beat their feet on the Mississippi Mud.”

Another War Is Brewing

by Patrick Appel

Only 9% of the American people want to go to war with Syria. Even when chemical weapons are mentioned, a growing plurality is against intervention:

But First Read believes that the US will use force:

All the action and body language over the weekend suggests that the United States is preparing for some kind of military response to the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. The question is: Just what kind of response will it be? On Saturday, President Obama met with his national security team, and he called British Prime Minister David Cameron. “The two leaders expressed their grave concern about the reported use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime… The United States and UK stand united in our opposition to the use of chemical weapons,” the White House said per a readout of the call. And on Sunday, the president spoke with French President Hollande. (These are the types of calls a president makes to both build support and inform of upcoming plans. Also of note, Secretary of State John Kerry spent the weekend briefing and speaking with a slew of Arab allies, particular the folks in the Gulf States, who could drive an Arab League decision that gives the U.S. the international legal justification it is currently looking for.) Indeed, as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “TODAY,” the United States and its allies are considering military options — most likely, cruise missiles from Navy destroyers and submarines in the Mediterranean or U.S. fighter jets targeting Syrian airfields from where chemical attacks could be launched. “I do think action is going to occur,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said on “TODAY.” The question no longer seems to be “if”; rather, it’s “when,” “how,” and “how long.”

War is the one area where the normal rules of politics are suspended. A president need not convince the American people or Congress that war is advisable. He need not explain the costs and benefits of force. Popular domestic policy proposals are routinely killed thanks to the fillibuster or the House’s ideological fanaticism, but deeply unpopular foreign policy interventions are carried out without haste. Mark Thompson notes how Congress avoids debate over going to war:

The last war Congress declared was World War II. Everything since — Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again!) and Libya — has been fought with something less than a full-throated declaration of war by the U.S. Congress.

Generally speaking, the President likes this, since he doesn’t have to convince Congress of the wisdom of his war, and Congress likes it even more. Under the current system, lawmakers get to wink at the White House by passing an authorization for the use of military force or other purported justification as a fig leaf they can abandon if things go sour. A declaration of war demands more, and Congress is leery of going on the record with such declarations for its own political reasons.

Hawkishness is Washington’s default setting – it remains one stubborn bit of bipartisan agreement in an era of deepening partisanship. But the disconnect between Washington’s foreign policy consensus and the nation’s has grown larger in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan. If bombing Syria devolves into a quagmire or it draws us into a war with Iran, the backlash could erase the gains the Democrats made on foreign policy by belatedly coming out against the Iraq War. Obama risks starting one of those “dumb wars” he so famously railed against. Crowley argues that Obama can accomplish his goals through “limited strikes on a handful of military targets, probably by means of cruise missiles that involve no risk to U.S. personnel.”:

The goal would be to impose a cost on Assad that outweighs whatever he thinks he gained by gassing hundreds of people near Damascus last week, as he is accused of doing. In doing so, Obama could hope to deter Assad from using his chemical arsenal again. And to demonstrate to the rest of the world, and especially to Iran, that he means what he says. Anyone hoping for more will likely be disappointed.

Larison fears that, if such measures fail to prevent further chemical weapons use, that “the U.S. will be pressured to continue escalating its involvement until the Syrian government is overthrown”:

After the regime is defeated, Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal will no longer be secure, and these weapons will go to whichever group can seize or buy them first, and it is even less likely that these groups will respect the taboo against their use.

Syrian blogger Maysaloon wants a Kosovo-like intervention:

The Kosovo model for intervention is not perfect, but it stopped the bloodshed and today Kosovo is limping along and people are rebuilding their lives at least. Of course it is still not a recognised state thanks to Russia blocking its recognition, but the important thing is that militias are not slaughtering whole families and villages. The same thing needs to happen in Syria and the country must be given as much support as possible to get back on its own two feet. This is not because Syrians need the world’s charity, but because if that does not happen then Syria will become a Somalia on the Mediterranean and bordering Europe. It is in the world’s interest to stop this wound from festering, and it is in Syria’s neighbour’s interests – all of them – that this country not implode. Because when it implodes all of Assad’s toys are going to end up in the wrong hands, however “careful” the West is and however pervasive Israel’s intelligence tries to be. A poisoned atmosphere and water table is not something anybody in the region can afford. Syria is a big puddle that can splash a lot of people, Assad knows this and he has been using this to stay in power, but it does not mean he cannot be toppled.

Fred Kaplan also compares Syria to Kosovo:

Given the threat, the humanitarian crisis, America’s standing in the region, and the importance of preserving international norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction, the best option might be to destroy huge chunks of the Syrian military, throw Assad’s regime off balance, and let those on the ground settle the aftermath. Maybe this would finally compel Assad to negotiate seriously; maybe it would compel the Russians to backpedal on their support (as NATO’s campaign in Kosovo compelled them to soften their support for Milosevic). Or maybe it would just sire chaos and violence. But there’s plenty of both now, and there might be less—a road to some sort of settlement might be easier to plow—if Assad were severely weakened or no longer around.

Tomasky worries that strikes against Syria could lead to war with Iran:

[T]here are reasons to act. But there’s one massive difference between Kosovo and Syria. Milosevic didn’t have a major regional power watching his back. Syria does. Iran complicates this immeasurably. Also over the weekend, the Iranian armed forces’ deputy chief of staff said the following: “If the United States crosses this red line [of intervention], there will be harsh consequences for the White House.” And this: “The terrorist war underway in Syria was planned by the United States and reactionary countries in the region against the resistance front (against Israel). Despite this, the government and people of Syria have achieved huge successes. Those who add fire to the oil will not escape the vengeance of the people.” Getting sucked into a situation that could lead to war with Iran is unthinkable. Of all the bad options, that is without question the most bad.

Walter Russell Mead wishes we had struck sooner:

Unfortunately, the policy of delay has made all the options worse without, it now appears, succeeding in keeping the US out of war. Instead of the choice we had at one time between American intervention and a humanitarian disaster, we now have American intervention AND a humanitarian nightmare, with a revival of a serious Al Qaeda presence in the heart of the Middle East thrown in for good measure.

And W. James Antle III is against a new war:

The only lesson Obama seems to have learned from Iraq is that large, expensive military occupations with American casualties are politically unpopular. The long-term, unintended consequences of regime change and the question of whether we are arming people today who will shoot us tomorrow do not seem to have left much of an impression.

The White Man Who Marched On Washington

by Matt Sitman

Michael Kazin revisits a neglected episode in the Civil Rights movements:

The 1963 March on Washington featured just one prominent white speaker. “We will not solve education or housing or public accommodations, as long as millions of Negroes are treated as second-class economic citizens and denied jobs,” declared Walter Reuther, the legendary president of the United Auto Workers. “This rally is not the end, it’s the beginning of a great moral crusade to arouse America to the unfinished work of American democracy.” Thus did he confidently link the goals of organized labor to those of the black freedom struggle.

[This week] will mark the 50th anniversary of the march, and Reuther’s seven-minute address is all but forgotten. Most Americans think of the great event, which ended with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s transcendent speech, solely as a proud landmark in the toppling of legal segregation and the building of a more racially tolerant society. It might even seem odd that King and his associates would have given a featured spot on the program to perhaps the most powerful labor leader in the country—one whom Barry Goldwater, then the leading Republican candidate for president, considered “more dangerous than Soviet Russia.” What was such a controversial white man doing up there?

The answer? Labor unions had been on the right side of the race question for decades:

Today, even in their weakened condition, unions remain the only institutions in America in which working people of every race routinely act together to improve their lives. But they have no Reuther or King to sing their praises and hardly any labor reporters in the mainstream media to describe and analyze what they do or who have a sense of their historical significance.

Update from a reader:

Great piece on Walter Reuther. He was my grandfather’s roommate for four years in Detroit in the 1920s. They did not agree on politics, since my grandfather was seriously to the right of Reagan. He had started out working on the line at Ford (where he met Walter), but owned his own tool-and-die shop, so he hated unions. But he always said that Walter Reuther was the most honest man he ever knew. One of the cheapest, too: they would double-date, and Gramps always had to drive, because Walter didn’t want to pay for gas.

(Photo: Walter Reuther, second from right, at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, via Wikimedia Commons)

Egypt’s Copts In The Crossfire

by Brendan James

McArdle suggests Western nations give Egypt’s Christians asylum as the country descends further into paranoid violence:

The U.S., along with other nations, should offer greater sanctuary to the Copts, who are clearly at risk as this drama plays out. This animus toward the large Coptic minority is not new — a friend whose grandfather was a prominent Coptic cleric once told me that his grandfather was used to spending time in jail because Hosni Mubarak would lock up some notable Copts every time he sensed the Muslim majority was getting restless. But this seems to be one of the worst spates of church-burning in Egypt since the Middle Ages. There’s a real risk that the widespread attacks on the Copts’ buildings will progress to widespread attacks on their people.

The Economist echoes her concern:

The virulence of the latest campaign stems from a perception among many Islamists, but particularly followers of the puritan Salafist school, that Christians helped orchestrate the July 3rd coup that toppled Muhammad Morsi. During the Brotherhood’s ill-fated sit-in, non-stop sermons frequently alleged Christian complicity in a global anti-Muslim plot. Salafist television stations have repeated claims of arms being stashed in churches.

Waguih al-Shimi, a former member of parliament for Nazla from the Salafist al-Nour party, says that while he disapproves of targeting Christians he understands what motivates their persecutors. Many Muslims, he says, were angered when the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, appeared next to Egypt’s defence minister as he announced the army coup. Salafist websites, according to Mr Shimi, have featured photographs showing soldiers raising the cross in triumph after shooting Islamist protesters. “Considering what has happened to Muslims,” says Mr Shimi, “we can thank God it was only Christian property, not people, that got hurt.”

More recent Dish on the plight of Egypt’s Copt minority here.

(Photo: A picture taken on August 18, 2013 shows a burnt icon in the Amir Tadros coptic Church in Minya, some 250 kms south of Cairo, which was set ablaze on August 14, 2013. By Virginie Nguyen Hoang/AFP/Getty Images)

Where Volunteering Meets Vacation

by Brendan James

Sarah Sloat questions the point of volunteer tourism, where travelers usually get a cheaper trip by signing up for community service in the host country:

Dr. Mary Mostafanezhad of the University of Otago consider(s) volunteer tourism to be, at best, an oversimplification of international development and, at worst, a perpetuation of colonialist behavior. (“Superior nations” have a moral responsibility to fix “lesser nations.”) During 16 months of ethnographic research, Mostafanezhad interviewed numerous volunteers about their experience working in Thailand and found that poverty was consistently described as a symptom of authenticity. “A result of this association is the depoliticization of poverty,” Mostafanezhad writes, “where questions of why or how people became ‘p00r’ are overshadowed by the aesthetic pleasure of the experience.”

Still, because volunteering does stem from a desire to do some good, critics of it acknowledge that it doesn’t need to be destroyed, but rather refocused. Perhaps volunteer tourism, as it is now, should be reserved for conservation efforts only. Donald Brightsmith a research assistant professor at Texas A&M, writes that the relationship between these three parties is a positive one: Volunteer tourists bring in funding for conservation research that is “chronically lacking,” researchers are able to complete their work, and volunteers receive the skill set that will help them become “young biologists, foresters, and veterinarians.”

Your Tattoo Isn’t Special, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

Except for this reader’s:

He writes:

I’d like to respond a little to the tattoo article. Tattoos are definitely more prevalent (especially among young people), but I hardly see how the author can use their presence in the fashion industry as evidence of this. I’ll start to be impressed with how times have changed when I see high-powered professionals with visible tattoos. It could happen, but most people getting fad tattoos are getting really, really bad ones, and I doubt they’ll want to be showing those off in their later years. Serious, high-quality, extensive tattooing is still not that common in most of the country, though I’m sure there’s more of it in more “hip” big cities.

For what it’s worth, I’m 27, a non-practicing attorney, and work in a Fortune 500 company. I’ve been working on a Japanese style full bodysuit tattoo for the past five years – all that’s left to tattoo are my legs. I wear long sleeves to work every day and rarely let anyone I don’t know well know about my tattoos. Attitudes change a lot more slowly in the business world.

Metaphors That Ought To Be Misdemeanors

by Matt Sitman

In a review of Wretched Writing: A Compendium of Crimes Against the English Language, Matthew Walther confirms the perils of writing about sex:

[T]here is plenty here to delight readers who enjoy seeing made plain the reasons that body parts and the sexual act should probably never be described. The editors’ heading “breasts, strange” is a bit of an understatement: under it we see these organs compared to snakes, pastries, gymnastic equipment, and eyeballs; we find them behaving like flags and speakers, lungs, and grain elevators. A related section shows us a certain biological structure common to all male higher vertebrates being referred to as a salmon, a cucumber, a lump of excrement, and, in what must surely be the silliest bit of anatomical description I have ever read, a cashew, a banana, and a sweet potato—all in the course of a single John Updike sentence.

Why Do Chinese Tourists Have Such A Bad Rep? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

Some pushback on the thread:

Your reader’s story about the flight to Adelaide was completely underwhelming. Who hasn’t seen oldish folks, of many nationalities, out of their element on airplanes and at airports? How would your reader like it if their first experience with air travel occurred when they were 50, and was conducted in a language they had no understanding of? A bus load of camera clicking tourists is a pain no matter where they’re from. Yes, the Chinese, being new to travel, may be a little worse, but it’s no different than the standards of behavior they follow in their own country. They’ll get better as they gain experience of the wider world. But all this bashing is unseemly and a tad bit offensive. Get a grip people, and try to be a little understanding. Chinese standards of personal space are different from Americans’. If you’ve ever been to Beijing rail station, you know this.

See above. Coincidentally, I had set aside that video a few months ago because it was so striking, not knowing if we could ever use it for a post … but wait long enough and a Dish reader will bring up any obscure, interesting point. Another writes:

The story about the Adelaide trip left a really bad taste in my mouth, because it exhibits exactly the sort of empathetic closure that often underscores unconsciously racist attitudes. First off, full disclosure – I’m ethnically Chinese, but I’m not from the PRC, and as you might have surmised by now, I’m a native writer/speaker of English. And I do agree with many of the comments about Chinese tourists, especially if they are in tour groups. I ought to know; my native country is a favourite tourist and immigration destination for Chinese nationals. In London, if I see a cluster of Chinese tourists coming down the road, I head for the pedestrian crossings.

In the Lake District, I would immediately take another path. In fact I am often angrier at them even than my white friends, because I am caught in a double bind – just as I would avoid those tourists, I am myself faced with suspicion when I go around Britain, despite being perfectly conversant in English. The flip side of “Chinese tourists having a bad reputation”, it turns out, is that a tourist can be guilty of nothing more than being or looking Chinese.

But I digress. That supposedly amusing story sent in by your reader, about the parents visiting their child in Adelaide and getting things all mixed up, is a very different situation from those group tourists who have not learned, or do not care, to respect the culture they happen to have travelled to. The reader himself indicates that when he says at the end that this was probably the first time that couple has been outside China; yet he does not consider the implications of that.

In a country where vast swathes of the population are still quite poor, and where simultaneously the rich generally have no compunction about showing off their wealth by jetting about, it is very clear to me which group the clueless couple belong to. If they have not been overseas before, and yet have a son who is studying in Adelaide, consider the efforts they must have made for their child to make it there. The skill of knowing airports, air travel and customs work, or to know how to navigate unfamiliar terrain, is not a skill these two hapless people chose not to learn despite having disposable income to fling on overseas trips; it was a sacrifice they made so they could now visit their kid who made good in Adelaide. Your reader, who claims to know a lot about East Asian cultures, curiously seems to have completely missed this point about filial piety and parental love.

Do we really expect, in the context of the previous post about the lack of a guidebook culture, or the general lack of cross-cultural knowledge, that a middle-aged Chinese couple – a middle aged couple from anywhere – would have known perfectly how to get about and handle themselves in a foreign country, after a long flight, when they know no one (and their son had yet to arrive) and do not speak the language? That is in no way amusing. Comedy works best when it kicks upwards – against rude, privileged Chinese tourists who defecate in heritage sites and talk at full volume all the time. I’m completely fine with mocking those people. But to kick downwards as your reader does, from their privileged position (since they “get around” and have ample opportunity to be irritated by Chinese travellers), is not amusing at all.

For some reason I suspect that if that Chinese couple spoke the same language as your reader, or were visibly from the same culture, then they might have been better disposed to them, or to consider them for what they are, ie. clueless and uninformed from inexperienced, as one might be expected to be – rather than judging them simply by what they do or look like, ie. ridiculous and worthy of mockery. Clearly, if the reader has seen fit to post this “amusing incident” even after knowing the facts about the Chinese couple’s situation, I’m not sure such empathy is much in evidence.

On a semi-related point, given the long-standing awareness of how the Chinese tourist market is large and continuously growing, I have to wonder why it seems abnormal that the Chinese tourists could not speak English, but very normal that none of the flight crew know how to speak Chinese. In the ’80s and ’90s, certainly, there was no shortage of enthusiasm about putting up signs in Japanese for the benefit of similarly English-challenged tourists. Admittedly, Japanese tourists are generally better behaved than the Chinese; but I don’t remember that snobbery is a key tenet of capitalism (or democracy, or indeed any universal conception of social forms or rights). Once again, I know the complaints, and I agree with them; but just as English speakers mock the French for their arrogance and refusal to budge on their Frenchness, how is it not sheer arrogance to mock the Chinese without making any effort to come closer to their culture and language, if only to tell them to speak a little more softly?

Thank you for your attention, and I do apologise for this rant.

Should Internet Access Be A Human Right?

by Tracy R. Walsh

Meghan Neal considers the question:

There’s an argument to be made that the right to a certain standard of living is interwoven with connectivity. Amnesty International made that very argument, writing that as the web is increasingly necessary to enjoy freedoms like health, education, employment, the arts, and gender equality, which “means that Information Technologies (yes, the Internet) are inseparable from the rights themselves.” …

Curiously, the strongest argument against connectivity as a human right comes from Vint Cert—curious because he sort of invented the internet. Last year, in the midst of the Arab Spring and social media-enabled revolutions, Cerf wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times that internet access enabled basic human rights but wasn’t itself one.

Picking A Coffee Community

by Jessie Roberts

Anthropologists conducted a comparative analysis of six Boston-area coffee shops, including three Starbucks locations:

The anthropologists conducted their observations at Pavement Coffee House in Copley Square, 1369 Coffee House in Central Square, Diesel Café in Davis Square, and in three nearby Starbucks locations. They focused their observations on five categories, derived by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, that describe how urban, social spaces function: how social and welcoming a place is; the arrangement of seating; the activities taking place there (work, socialization, leisure); amenities (like wi-fi and power outlets); and the overall atmosphere, as measured by music volume, volume of chatter, wall color, lighting, and décor.

The biggest surprise was that, on the whole, Starbucks actually provided a more welcoming environment than any of the three local coffee houses. They credited the Central Square Starbucks with having the most vibrant sense of community, and observed that the baristas there knew many patrons by name and could anticipate their orders. The anthropologists also noted that the Starbucks baristas were friendlier to new customers than the bespoke hipsters behind the counter at the local places: “The Starbucks baristas would help customers by explaining the many options available and even offering suggestions. In contrast, the baristas at the independently-owned coffee houses were more aloof and would just wait or sometimes stare at a customer, offering minimal assistance.” The Starbucks friendliness advantage was further accentuated by its greater amenities. In particular, the locally owned coffee shops were more restrictive with their Internet policies, either charging for wi-fi access (Diesel Café and 1369 Coffee House) or setting a cap on daily Internet use (Pavement Coffee House).

(Photo by Flickr user tawalker)