Lucky White Girl

Why hire a PR firm when you have the Washington Post?

A few weeks ago I pointed out the Washington Post's editorial in support of the free trade deal with Colombia.  On Sunday there was an interview published with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, a man who has openly acknowledged having ties to paramilitary groups in the past.  Here are some of the questions this hard-hitting PR flak --er, I mean "reporter" had for Mr. Uribe:

• Haven't you stuck your neck out to be a good US ally in the war on terrorism and the war on drugs? Are you thinking about alternatives  to your alliance with the US if this [trade deal] does not go through?

• Try to explain to the American people how important the [deal] is to your country --what it means in terms of growth and how damaging it would be to you, who have been a strong US ally if the agreement is rejected?

• You put so much on the line for an ally, and Washington doesn't come through for you?

Today Mr. Uribe's administration is in the news again for another scandal (they've been having to deal with recent revelations that many other people in his administration have ties to paramilitary groups also.  The documentation of corruption and human rights violations in Colombia under the Uribe administration is compelling.  Here's just a sampling:

Reuters: Colombia scandal creeps closer to Uribe (April 2007)

National Security Archive: Documents Implicate Colombian Government in Chiquita Terror Scandal (March 2007)

Washington Post: Paramilitary Ties to Elite in Colombia (March 2007)

Council on Foreign Relations: Colombia Scandal Imperils US Alliance (May 2007)

The House Democrats are right to block a trade deal with a country so corrupt.  Uribe is not a honorable character and we should not be validating his administration with any kind of alliance. 

CBS story on racial disparities in media coverage of missing/abused women

I was pleasantly surprised to see this is a CBS story:

Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide:

"Cases of maternal homicide involving minority women are underreported and underpublicized"

And by the way, that link goes to a blog called Black and Missing!! which is linked to down there under Tamika Huston's picture (whose link is dead by the way, I'll have to fix that.  The site that was dedicated to publicizing her disappearance later reported on her death and had lots of resources on taking action to change this.  Now the domain name's up for sale.)

Could this be a sign we're having an influence on mainstream media?  That they've started taking these stories seriously I think is thanks to the work of all the great bloggers out there who've repeatedly put stories like this in the spotlight.  Many of them are listed in my blogroll.  Check them out!

 

Big ol' messy world

You know the opening scene in Blue Velvet where you see the beautiful idyllic scene of the "typical" middle class family in front of their house with the beautiful yard and then the man watering the grass has a heart attack and dies and the camera follows the arc of the water from the hose down to the grass and then into the grass and underneath the grass and you start to see all the stuff that's going on beneath the surface?

Some of you were wondering how long it'd be until I used that analogy to talk about DC!

I know it's kind of a cliche but I have two observations: one, today it dawned on me that it's not just a cliche, it's really true --I saw it! and two, it's a little more complicated than that.

Everyone knows the complicated messy underbelly of the city is there but I think people pretty much fall into one of the following two camps: those who think you should pretend it's not and those who are okay with it.  They're even (like me), more than okay with it, they relish it.  They like the complicatedness.  They like messiness.  That's the humanity of it.  Blurry lines may lead to much uncertainty and vulnerability but that's a delicious part of being human and it would be with much resistance that I get dragged over to the other side where I can neatly compartmentalize my life and pretend --and forget I'm pretending-- that it's all just an illusion.