Shouldering the Burden

It's probably an understatement to say that Miss USA, Rachel Smith, had a rough night on Monday at the Miss Universe pageant held in Mexico.

Not only did the poor girl fall down hard on her bottom during the evening gown competition, but she was roundly booed all night long by the Mexican audience.

Despite the hosts' pleas during commercial breaks that the audience tone down the hostility toward Miss USA, the booing continued and nearly drowned out Smith's responses to the interview questions.

This was clearly not a personal attack against Smith (although I'm sure the 21-year-old from Tennessee was deeply hurt by the public taunts), rather it was an emotional response to Mexico's tense relations with the U.S., due largely to this country's broken immigration laws and the controversial new plan for reform.

Sadly for Smith and her family, it was her slender shoulders that were to bear the weight of the audience's wrath for her nation's government.

Despite the indignant reaction of the broadcast media ("How could the audience be so cruel?"), the treatment Smith got in Mexico is just the latest manifestation of the blazing anti-Americanism that has infected the world.

We should hardly be surprised.

But rather than reacting angrily and condemning the Mexican pageant audience, perhaps the media should take this opportunity to have a discussion about the rampant anti-Americanism that has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of allowing us to exist in a national bubble without much consideration of the rest of the world, the media should help us understand why we estadounidenses have become so hated - and more importantly, what we can do to regain the respect and admiration of the rest of the world.

Too Kind to Tancredo

Despite the impossible odds, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is wasting our time and reporters' ink with his hopeless run for the presidency. But as it turns out, Tancredo may understand there is more to running the country than giving the boot to 12 million undocumented immigrants and sealing the southern border with a 2,000-mile steel fence.

Over the weekend, Tancredo campaigned in Iowa and touched on school vouchers, healthcare and gasoline taxes between rants on the great peril of the Latin American immigrant invasion of the U.S. However, his rhetoric about how to tackle America’s other domestic quagmires is totally uninspired compared to the ferocity he reserves for the issue of illegal immigration. Karen Crummy, of The Denver Post, was with Tancredo in Iowa and quoted him regarding health care reform, considered a pressing need by many within the medical profession.

“Health care is an individual decision to a large extent. You need to stop looking at the government,” Tancredo said. “I will not propose any huge programs.”

Lucky for us (and especially for the millions of Americans that can’t afford health insurance under the present system), Crummy points out that Tancredo’s odds at becoming president are, at best, a million to one.

To me it is curious that Tancredo, who offers little in the way of fresh ideas on any issue, is considered a respectable voice in the immigration debate. Tancredo bills himself as a tireless advocate of tighter border security and tougher immigration laws, but his comments often reveal a baffling ignorance on the issue he has adopted as his own. For example, if Tancredo were to examine the statistics from Princeton's Mexican Migration Project, as many scholars have, he would find that the border security he lauds is largely responsible for the massive population of permanently settled undocumented immigrants present in all 50 states.

Before the IRCA immigration reform of 1986, MMP data showed that incoming migration from Mexico was set off by the outgoing migration of roughly equal numbers. The tightening of security along the border had an effect, but not the desired one. Rather than keeping people out, the increased security just prevented people from going home. The nature of the work performed by many Mexican migrants has traditionally been seasonal in nature, and in the past, most migrant workers would return home in between jobs in the U.S. But the IRCA reforms put a stop to that practice for most people. The border cross became too hazardous. So rather than risk not being able to get back into the U.S., migrants stayed and worked to bring their families north. Whereas undocumented immigrants were once mostly male and residents in a few southwestern states, the result over time has been a huge increase in settled populations of undocumented immigrants all over the nation.

A studied, nuanced view of the immigration issue is something Tancredo is simply not capable of. I believe at the root of his vehemently anti-immigration stance is a strong desire to keep America a predominantly white nation of European descendants. Xenophobia drips from Tancredo’s lips when he speaks, and unfortunately, it’s a stance that has earned him plenty of friends and admirers. Luckily, there aren’t nearly enough “Tancrazies” out there to give him even a snowball’s chance of getting elected president.

No Scandal Too Scandalous

After the embarrassing personal foibles of Clinton's final years in office, George Bush promised to restore honor and integrity to the executive branch. But seven years on, his administration has weathered and is presently embroiled in dozens upon dozens of scandals; although none of them seem damaging enough to change the course of this disastrous administration.

In early 2005, Salon.com compiled a list of 34 Republican scandals that began during the Bush administration's first term in office. In the twilight years of Bush's presidency, the scandals continue to pile up; yet the political consequences for Republicans have been relatively light.

The fictitious case made by the White House to invade Iraq will go down in history as this scandalous administration's most monumental screw up. Bush and his top officials lied to the American people, Congress, the UN and the world when they made their case for war with Saddam Hussein. In comparison, the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons and the conviction of Republicans on corruption and perjury charges pale. Stumbling on to the scene in Iraq opened the door for colossal new scandals like torture perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Just to name a few...

-World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is under pressure to resign after it was revealed he pulled strings to get his girlfriend a lucrative job at the State Department while remaining on the Bank's payroll.

-Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, was convicted on perjury and obstruction charges in connection with leaking the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has lost the confidence of scores of lawmakers for his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, who seem to have been sacked in order to make room for political sympathizers.

The Democrats have not gone after the White House Republicans with even a trace of the rabidity that characterized the Republican legislators' attacks on Clinton. For most of his presidency, Bush has enjoyed a partisan Congress that wouldn't dream of investigating thier cronies in the executive branch. Also, as Salon pointed out, without the "drumbeat of scandal" sustained by the right-wing news media - as we saw during the Clinton-Lewinski debacle - the Bush administration scandals, inexplicably, do not seem to be a defining feature of his reign. While Clinton's adultery was contemptible, his missteps seem utterly trivial compared to this president's slip-ups, which have conservatively cost tens of thousands of civilian lives.

Get that murderous psycho off the news!

I've come to expect little better from the television media, so I'm not surprised the news networks have endlessly broadcasted the photos, video and text that killer Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC Monday just before his final rampage in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech.

But I was EXTREMELY dismayed to see The Denver Post's front page with the killer's creepy photos and ranting quotes enlarged so no reader could possibly miss them. There is no clarification, closure or comfort to be gained by seeing those images and reading his rants. The photos and video don't show Cho as the troubled loner he really was, but rather, as the tough guy he wished he could be.


What kind of message does this send to the families of Cho's victims, and the families of Columbine victims for that matter? It tells them that the killer is calling the shots, and the story is about him, not his victims. Not only did he take the lives of 32 innocent people, he is now been elevated to celebrity status for doing so. When Cho sent those materials to NBC, he wanted to go down in infamy, and the media happily obliged.

So, what's the take home message for all the would-be shooters out there who are angry enough to contemplate taking their own lives? Why go out anonymously when you can blow away 32 people and be immortalized for it in the papers and on the news? As the hometown paper for the families and friends of the Columbine shooting victims, The Denver Post showed no regard for the duty of care the newspaper owes to those sensitive readers.

Of course, the story is incredibly newsworthy and deserves thorough coverage, but for god's sake, direct readers to the website where they can read Cho's letter and see his angry photos, don't put it on the front page. This story should now be about the victims, not their murderer. By printing and broadcasting the killer's photos, videos and texts, the media has inadvertently validated Cho's heinous act and invited other sick and vengeful individuals to do the same. And for a newspaper like The Denver Post that knows for a fact people who have been directly affected by a similar shooting are among its readers, the editorial decision to put Cho on today's front page is incomprehensible.

Devastation at VT haunts Boulder

I wasn't nervous about going to the CU Boulder campus for class today, but I was certainly a bit more on guard after more than thirty people were murdered at Virginia Tech yesterday. Horrible acts often beget more horrible acts. Last September, 16-year-old Emily Keyes was killed at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., and days later, a madman killed five people at an Amish school in Pennsylvania.

Knowledge of the tragedy in Virginia added a layer of unease to an already tense day on the Boulder campus. The fanatical anti-abortion folks were out with their mural-sized pictures of bloody and dismembered fetuses in various stages of development. Then there was the student Republican club holding its annual "Affirmative Action Bakesale," which drew a crowd of about 100, sign-wielding counter protesters. The "Bakesale" featured a single, lonely bin of grocery store cookies, which were on sale for different prices depending on the buyers race. The idea is to protest the racial preference practices of affirmative action.

Too add to all this dramatic tension in the crisp air this morning, our professor was pulled from class suddenly because a student in one of her other classes had expressed admiration for the shooter in Blacksburg, Va., and added that he had fantasized about doing something similar. The professor called the police and spent the remainder of our class calling student witnesses and giving a police report. NPR reported that several other universities around the country had similar scares.

What happened yesterday is incomprehensible, even for a society as plagued by gun violence as this one. It's being called the worst shooting in modern U.S. history, and the blogosphere is exploding with posts about the event. The right-wingers say it's proof we need to relax our gun laws; after all, if other students had been armed, the shooter never would have been so "successful" in his rampage. Those on the left say the incident screams for tighter gun regulation, or at least a ban on assault weapons and automatic handguns.

What I don't want to see, but what I fear is inevitable, is an anti-Asian backlash in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. The shooter was a 23-year-old student, originally from South Korea named Seung-Hui Cho. He lived in a dorm; his roommates described him as a stoic, silent loner. Apparently, one of his English professors once tried to warn school officials about his frighteningly dark paper topics, but there wasn't much anyone could do unless he made a threat, they said.

No race or nationality has a monopoly on hate and brutality. The killer's race is pretty insignificant; what's more important is what we can do to make sure this never happens again. But surely, just as Muslim-Americans felt targeted in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks, so will Asian-Americans likely feel scrutinized and blamed for the horrific act of one sick individual.

Now we have our answer

My last post was titled Russia: free and safe? Well, we have a definitive answer today after a weekend of violent state repression of peaceful protests in Russia's two major cities. Russian riot police and soldiers beat and detained hundreds of anti-Kremlin protesters, who staged modest demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday and in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

Thousands of people gathered in Moscow and St. Petersburg for peaceful protest marches meant to express opposition to Putin and his cronies. Unfortunately, Putin struck back in a big way. Fewer than 2,000 protesters in Moscow were met by 9,000 soldiers and police, who prevented the demonstrators from marching to a central square. For 2,000 protesters in St. Petersburg, Putin called on a mere 1,500 police to stop them.

France24 reported that Russian police beat a man who lay motionless on the ground and bloodied the nose of a middle-aged woman.

If this weekend's actions on the part of the Russian authorities do not prove Putin is a tyrannical and anti-democratic, it is hard to imagine what will. I hope democratic nations the world over raise hell diplomatically over the Kremlin's shameless repression of peaceful opposition protesters.

Opposition in Russia is clearly not tolerated. Public criticism of Putin is almost never heard, and the state controls all the TV channels and most of the radio stations. In March 2008 there will be a national election to replace Putin, who is constitutionally term-limited. Despite Putin's brutality and dictatorial qualities, the Russian president remains popular, and whoever Putin endorses as his successor is practically a shoe-in.

Now I wonder what those CWA panelists think of the weekend's events. They were so damn chipper about how free and lovely Russia is; I'm curious if this will change their tune.

Russia: safe and free?

I’m pretty shy; and it’s rare I feel compelled to get up in front of a room of people to ask a question. But yesterday I attended a panel on Russia at the CWA and found myself desperate to challenge one of the panelists. Unfortunately, too many other people were similarly inspired, and I never got the chance. Jennifer Trelewicz didn’t come across as a thoughtful scholar or an objective expert, but more of a Russian nationalist, an emissary straight from the Kremlin hoping to convince us that Russia - contrary to everything we read in the American and Western European media – is really an orderly, free and wholly democratic country.

Trelewicz and her co-panelist, Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, spent their presentations trying to convince a skeptical audience that the Russian system of checks and balances tops that of the U.S. and that there are better laws, more stringent regulation, and that the enormous gap between the rich and the poor in Russia is filling up with a prosperous and contented middle class.

“We feel it is a very free country, a very free place to live,” Trelewicz said.

Her comment rung in my ears, for it seemed to contradict most all the news coming out of Russia recently. It’s none too free for homosexual people who wanted to hold a pride parade in Moscow but were scorned and laughed at by the city’s mayor. It’s also not free for journalists – every one of them who dared to speak the truth about Russia’s involvement in Chechnya has been murdered, most recently Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in the atrium of her Moscow apartment building last fall. President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on dissent in the broadcast media, causing alarm among defenders of the free press. In order to maintain an aura of democracy, Putin has largely left the print media alone, preferring to focus TV, which is probably more effective in reaching the masses.


Russia probably doesn’t seem like a very free place to people of color either. That country has a real problem with skinheads and anti-Semites who regularly attack immigrants and dark-skinned Russians, whose motto is “Russia for the Russians.” One particularly horrific example occurred in 2003 when over 40 foreign students died in a dormitory fire at a university in Moscow. Although no investigation was ever launched, arson is suspected as the cause of the fire. Before the fatal blaze, black and Asian students had been the subjects of violent racist attacks, perpetrated by skinheads – two of whom were chased out of the dormitory the night before it burned to the ground. And the stringent safety regulations the panelists boasted didn’t seem to help the 63 people who burned to death in their sleep last month when their retirement home in southern Russia caught fire. The 45 women who died in a fire at a hospital in Moscow last December also saw little benefit from the Russian regulations boasted about by Trelewicz.

So, I guess my question is, for whom is Russia free? When I was there for a few weeks on 2005, I found it to be a beautiful and complex nation, but one riddled with corruption (we were shaken down three times by the police), and serious social problems including rampant alcoholism, widespread poverty and a low standard of living for many people. It seemed to me the two panelists I mentioned gave the audience the broad strokes in bright colors, but their comments didn’t reflect the complexity of the Russia I experienced or the social turmoil in that country we read about in the news.