| Number 212 | July 4, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Holiday coming. No room. No time. No editor’s note this week. See you on the 11th. Nygaard |
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From the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of May 12, under the headline: “Bush Plan Might Help Workers, But Visit to Their Plant Might Not”:
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In an article about “edgy” advertising being used by local restaurants, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) decided on June 10 that it was newsworthy to point out that “the edgier the ad, the greater the risk of offending someone.” The article, on page one of the Business Section was headlined “Ooh! Ooh! Over Here!” (that was really the headline) and featured an “upscale” chain restaurant called Chino Latino. Their ads are so “edgy” that they have been the subject of a boycott by local activists and Asian-American people of conscience. A recent ad campaign promoted: “Happy Hour: Cheaper Than A Bangkok Brothel.” This was no doubt an “edgy” reference to the hundreds of thousands of children involved in the sex trade in Thailand. Or, perhaps it was an ironic attempt to capitalize on the poverty that is driving more boys and girls into the sex trade. It’s hard to tell. Past billboards had included references to Asians eating cats and dogs, and INS persecution of illegal immigrants. The Star Trib talked to Phil Roberts, chief executive of Parasole Inc., the holding company that owns Chino Latino and several other restaurants, about their advertising. He had a thoughtful response: “We heard from the print-skirt, gauze-blouse, Birkenstock crowd,” he said. “There was a petition with a thousand signatures. There was an organized campaign to clog our cell phones. And business went up, by the way. Noticeably.” That’s because, we are told, “the Chino Latino ads are reaching their market,” which is identified as “a crowd of twenty-somethings, dressed in black Armani.” And, as long as those people spend money at your business, who cares if your ads are displayed to the entire population of the cities in which you advertise, perpetuating mindless and dangerous stereotypes and making a joke out of the suffering of somebody who most likely can’t afford to wear Armani anyway? [Ed. note: That is a rhetorical question.] How little these people care about such issues was summed up nicely by Patti Williams, a “professor of marketing” at the U of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who reminded readers how marketers think. “Love and hate are both passions," she said, “And marketers are reaching to make a long-term, passionate connection.” |
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The Opinion page of the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of April 28 carried a piece by Andro Linklater, author of the book “Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy.” It seems that it has been 200 years since the so-called “Louisiana Purchase” was executed, and the Times was in a mood to celebrate on this, the Bicentennial. Linklater, and the Times, are likely speaking for a large part of the mainstream with their celebratory piece. The official government website, after all—the National Archives—refers to the Louisiana Purchase as the “sweetest real estate deal of the millennium.” In the world of Linklater and the Times, the previous “owner” of the territories, France, was rather backward, since the land under their rule could be “sold only to those appointed by the governor. In the United States, however, land could be owned by whoever could afford it.” This was a great thing, says Andro, and I’ll quote the key paragraph in full so you get his point:
This is an absolutely stunning piece. In Linklater’s perverted view, “anyone” could own the land, which of course is nonsense. Nowhere do we see any reference to the indigenous people who were being slaughtered and driven from the land in order to make this “purchase” possible. They hardly had any right to “own” anything. (In the social systems of at least some of the North American original peoples, the very concept of “ownership” was foreign.) Nor is there any discussion of just how France came to “own” this “property,” although it must have, or else the United States could not have “purchased” it from them, right? Neither is there any mention of the slaves whose labor was being counted on to create a large part of the “wealth” and property, which future power was to follow. Unmentioned is the colonial mentality that allows one to imagine that France somehow had a legitimate right to “sell” these lands, identified in Linklater’s piece as “these immense solitudes.” They then became “public lands,” to be sold to the highest bidders (as long as they were “white”) a process which is understood to be “democratic,” and the justice of which would be supported as a matter of course by those “property-owning citizens” who would have “a vested interest in a law-abiding society.” There is no word in English, as far as I know, to express my emotions upon reading something like this. I grew up with this sort of racist and colonialist thinking—“manifest destiny” and all that—yet I am still nearly brought to tears when I read pieces like this in the Newspaper of Record in the United States. |
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Nygaard’s Four-Step Process for Reading the Newspaper consists of:
This week’s mini-case study will focus on Step #2: Remembering. In early May George Bush hosted a couple of heads of state as they visited him at the White House and at his Texas ranch. These visits, by the Spanish and the Australian prime ministers, were reported as being “thank-yous” from Mr. Bush for being two of “his most loyal supporters” of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. “In contrast,” reported the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) on May 8, “Mr. Bush has said that Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France, who actively worked against the United States on Iraq, will not be a ranch guest anytime soon.” Explaining why the U.S. is so upset with France, Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller pointed out some comments that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had made in interviews published that day, to the effect that France, unlike the U.S., is a bully. “The United States did not divide the Europeans,” Ms. Rice said, adding that “it wasn’t us that threatened smaller countries with reprisals nor tried to shut up the countries of Eastern Europe.” This statement passed without comment in the Times report. As we go on, keep in mind the phrase “threatened smaller countries.” Threatening France I believe that a reporter, when quoting a powerful official, has a responsibility to point out at least the most obvious points where the official’s comments seem to conflict with their behavior. In this case, Ms. Bumiller could have simply remembered what she had reported literally two paragraphs earlier, in the same story. Here’s what Bumiller wrote: “Senior administration advisers are meanwhile seeking ways to punish France for what they consider the country’s rebellious behavior.” Now, if this isn’t “threatening a smaller country,” I don’t know what is. Furthermore, it’s highly likely that Ms. “We Don’t Threaten Smaller Countries” Rice, as national security adviser, is one of the “senior administration officials” cited by Bumiller. That’s not really much of a memory test, as it only asks reporter Bumiller to remember what she herself had written moments earlier. But there are other items that she could also have remembered. A couple of weeks earlier, on April 24th, the Times published a story headlined “U.S., Angry at French Stance on War, Considers Punishment,” in which it reported that Secretary of State Colin Powell had stated earlier in the week that “[France] would be punished for taking on the United States.” That seems like a pretty clear “threat to a smaller country.” Threatening Turkey France isn’t very small, you say? How about Turkey? About a month before Powell’s comment, on March 25, the Times ran an article in the “World Business” section headlined “U.S. Disfavor Drains Turkish Economy.” This told the tale of the financial consequences of the Turkish decision in early March to deny—in accord with the wishes of 95 percent of its population—the wishes of the U.S. to use Turkey as a northern staging ground for its attack on Iraq. The U.S. threatened at the time that there would be consequences for this defiance and, sure enough, even before the official U.S. punishment (whatever it may be) was meted out, the “markets” took their cue and started to pull their investments from Turkey. This caused a fall in the value of the Istanbul Stock Exchange of about 25 percent in the month following the U.S. threats, “approaching an all-time low.” Remember, this is not a conspiracy; this is how the financial markets work. They value, above all else, “stability,” and foreign investors, as the Times put it, always have had “a belief that no matter how bad things became, Turkey would never be allowed to fail; the United States would always come to the rescue of so important a strategic ally.” But now, “that faith is deeply dented,” so the money is fleeing the country, which will perhaps force Turkey to “announce a moratorium on its domestic debt,” which in turn could result in “a broader financial collapse,” with likely-disastrous consequences for the population. Recall that all of this punishment is the result of the Turkish parliament honoring the wishes of the overwhelming majority of its people. While most would call this “democracy,” it’s not a good thing in the eyes of the “Free Market” and its newsletter, the Times. In their world, what we were told we had seen was that “the [Turkish] government proved unable to push the deal with the United States through the fractious Turkish parliament [representing the nearly-unanimous Turkish people], and was left looking ineffectual both domestically and internationally.” (See NN #205, “The U.S. and The Undermining of Democracy” for details on Turkey’s defiant pro-democracy stand.) So, there is another story of a U.S. “threatening a smaller country,” directly and indirectly. Threatening the World Just this week, on July 1st, the United States announced that it would suspend aid to no fewer than 35 countries that have refused to grant U.S. citizens immunity from prosecution for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the newly-empowered International Criminal Court. (Lotte Leicht of Human Rights Watch said on Radio Netherlands this week that “the United States has declared war against this court and has gone out of its way to undermine it altogether,” a sentiment widely shared around the world, but hardly reported in this country.) This campaign to undermine the court has been going on for some time. In fact, NY Times reporter Marlise Simons reported the following on March 13th, in another story that Elizabeth Bumiller should have remembered when she reported the White House’s claim that we don’t threaten smaller countries:
Threats, threats, and more threats. The recent record is filled with them, and to recall even a few of them is to place the comments of Ms. Condoleezza Rice in a very different light than she would like. Such an attempt to contrast the words of an administration spokesperson with the actual deeds of that administration would no doubt be seen by some as evidence of bias. I think it is just responsible reporting. To do less is simply to act as a stenographer for the powerful; a propagandist, if you will. Beyond being further evidence of the United States’ record of “threatening smaller countries,” the decision by The World’s Only Superpower to grant or withhold foreign aid based upon a smaller and weaker country’s subservience to U.S. wishes is a big story in itself. I’ll be writing about this abuse of power in a future Nygaard Notes. |