OK, So Spitzer Is a Hypocrite and an Unfaithful Husband.

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“The World” is a Chinese movie, a recent one about a theme park in Beijing.  “Give us a day and we’ll show you the world.”  It has smaller versions of such landmarks as the Eiffel Tower, Manhattan skyline, Acropolis and St. Peters.  The movie follows Tao, a 20 something dancer, and her off and on boyfriend, Taisheng, through the ups and downs of a love affair.

This is a slice of life film most interesting to me in its depiction of rural folks who’ve come to the Capital to make a life.  The rural to urban story is a global story, retold time and time again in Bogota, Rio, Paris, Athens, Lagos, Shanghai and Minneapolis.  The tentativeness of relationships, particularly among the young, is also a global story, especially among young, recently emigrated urban folk.

Not a thrilling movie, but moving.

OK, so Spitzer is a hypocrite and an unfaithful husband.  And, yes, he drug his wife along to his confession.  The Daily Show did a great piece on that last night, showing several governors with their wives by their side as they confess sexual dalliance.  They could have added evangelical preachers and congressman.  They did include Bill Clinton.

The implication I don’t find helpful is that because he paid money for sex he was not a good prosecutor.  The guilt or innocence of the persons on Wall Street that he prosecuted are not less or more responsible for their crimes because he’s a schmuck.  The quality of his prosecution does not depend on his sexual fidelity any more than it depends on his perfect health.  

Someday, America, we’ve got to get over this fascination with sex and public people.  We need pay much greater attention to the policies they pursue and not so much to their bedrooms.  And, yes, I even believe that’s true of Larry Craig, although his mendacity following his arrest has put him in a different category altogether. 

The Sons of the Soil

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Below is a reply to my brother Mark about this e-mail he sent to me:

Charles, This is pretty amazing. It really needed to happen. Mark ** Penang abandons pro-Malay policy **The Malaysian state of Penang says it will no longer follow a government policy favouring ethnic Malays.< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7289509.stm >In re:  the sons of the soil.  When I was in Hawai’i, I learned the natives call themselves kama’aina, literally children of the land.  Businesses offer a kama’aina discount and there has been some effort to get civil service preference to kama’aina.  In Hawai’i, where the indigenous population has experienced considerable oppression (plantation slavery for sugar and pineapples) and marginalization (numbers cut by 90% thanks to disease), it seems just.

It made me think a lot about this notion of belonging to a land, or a place.  The problem with identifying one ethnicity or one particular population as sons of the soil is its ahistorical nature.  That is, at some point in time, virtually every population on earth, outside of a miniscule group in Africa, emigrated. In other words, kama’aina is not a permanent characteristic, rather it reflects an acquired relationship, one that reflects a love for this place.  Others, too, can become kama’aina.  That is the essential injustice in the Malaysian situation.It is, too, an injustice in Hawai’i, if Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and white inhabitants cannot, at some point, also be kama’aina.

 

As I thought more about it, I realized I am kama’aina of the American Midwest, the heartland of the North American continent, yet I am also a son of immigrants.  Am I less wedded to this land than the Annishinabe or the Lakota?  I don’t think so.  My life depends on it. When I return, I see home in its lakes and forests.

In fact, the whole notion of an ecological consciousness comes down to seeing ourselves, each of us, as kama’aina of the planet earth.

Anyhow, thanks.  I agree, amazing and hopeful.