Tuesday, May 20, 2003

I'm on a tear today.  Two new pictures on the Mercedes picture page (one of which is right below this post), and a few more on the Reeve picture page. 3:32:41 PM    Let's hear it. []

Yeah, yeah, you think your kids are cute and all, but look at this: Reeve isn't even five months old, and here she is, reading a book her sister published. 2:46:59 PM    Let's hear it. []

Nicholas Kristof's editorial today in the New York Times is profoundly depressing. So is this article in Slate yesterday. Both are different stories about the disaster that is sub-Saharan Africa--Kristof's article is about famine, the Slate article is about genocidal war in the Congo. It's impossible to find good news about Africa. Between war, genocide, poverty, famine, environmental destruction, warlordism, totalitarianism, cronyism, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and whatever else could possibly go wrong with one continent, it's there. My political tendencies run amok as it relates to Africa. The stories are heart-wrenching. The governments are, for the most part, atrocious. The poverty and health problems boggle the mind. The inclination, I think, especially of liberal folks like me, is to say that the USG should be sending in food aid and economic aid and whatever help we can spare. After all, a large share of the problems there can be attributed to colonialism, slavery, and global economic policies. Not all of them, by any stretch, but some of them. And that makes us culpable, in part. But here is the uncomfortable reality: Africa may not be fixable. There are just too many stories about cultural barriers, incomparable corruption, and ethnic hatred so deep that Western notions of "fixing the problem" are laughable. The most depressing part of Kristof's article is here: What breaks your heart is the sight of healthy parents cradling skeletal children. Petros Loka, for example, is a young man with the hint of a potbelly — yet he was at an Ethiopian clinic with his 7-year-old son, David, who was admitted at 31 pounds and looked like a ghost. Trying to puzzle out how this could happen, I asked how the family ate. "The man eats first, and then the children and the wife eat together," Mr. Loka explained. Others confirm that across rural Ethiopia, the father eats first and the mother and children get leftovers — with the smallest kids mostly squeezed out How can food aid fix that? Education? I guess, but we're talking about some major league cultural barriers here. And even if you fixed that sort of problem, what about all the rest? There are more existential threats in Africa than anywhere. More cruelty and hideous mistreatment of human beings than the rest of the world combined. Some good friends of ours have spent a lot of time in southern Africa, either studying for grad school or in the Peace Corps. The stories they tell are sickening. AIDS is rampant, yet largely not acknowledged at all by the population or governments. Attempts to teach fall short. Everyone is fatalistic. Kristof concludes by saying that we really need to help. I understand, but that's not a helpful statement. How? I don't know. We can't--just can't--wash our hands of Africa. But what can be done? I don't even know what it would take--even if someone had a good idea how to deal with every one of the problems facing Africans, what politician is going to fight for that? I'll write something about scary movies later. This is all too depressing. to think about for very long. 2:33:26 PM    Let's hear it. []

I'm actually a little bit sad that Ari Fleischer is leaving.  It's not like his departure will suddenly result in a moderate Bush Administration.  And the next Press Secretary is probably going to obfuscate just as much.  But Ari has such a unique combination of brash willingness to lie, incredible smarminess, self-righteous overconfidence, and disdain for the press that he's more fun to hate than anyone but maybe Ashcroft.  12:06:48 PM    Let's hear it. []