This morning on CTV, I heard some jibber-jabber* that Michelle Obama might have a white ancestor. The dialogue went on for many a minute as the talking heads discussed the significance of this and how it might help heal social wounds. I find it hard to believe that Mrs. Obama’s lineage will have some wider social implications.
Does anyone really care that much? Is this actually important news?
*I’d dig up a link, but it’s such a silly story that it’s not worth my time.
Isn’t it least hypothesis that any given African-American has white ancestry?
My wife was the who called the story to my attention, and that was her initial thought.
yes, but not always stemming from American crossbreeding.
Oh, good. Easy questions.
Does anyone really care that much?
Maybe, but God knows they shouldn’t.
Is this actually important news?
Not even remotely.
Now, if they’d found her birth certificate…*grin*
It’s summer. It defined “slow news” even BEFORE 24/7 cable shows.
I think we’re due for another summer of shark attacks, actually. Sure, actual shark attacks won’t be up (or possibly even be down), but you can be sure with enough people in the water in a coastline as big as the US’s that they’ll be a shark attack regularly enough to keep it at fever pitch and cover the big gaps in programming.
Also, did you know most shark attacks occur in less than six feet of water? The fact that “less than six feet of water” is where all the people are is, of course, not relevant. 😛
I bet the next shark that kills someone will be found out to be on bath salts.
Local news is so bad it’s almost impossible to parody. “Are sharks making meth in your local elementary school’s pool? STAY TUNED AT ELEVEN TO FIND OUT!”
I avoid TV news like the plague. I’m having a harder and harder time finding print news that doesn’t make me want to go stabby-stabby.
About all that’s saving me is some old advice from a government professor (small community college, major libertarian type — the sort that spends a lot of time in court because he believes driver’s licenses are unconstitutional) — read newspaper articles backwards.
The last few paragraphs — the ones many people don’t read — often contradict or greatly mitigate the headline and opening paragraphs.
See, it’s this sort of distilled irrelevancy and utter nonsense that makes so many people down here tune out of politics.
Please tell me it’s different in Canada. Please.
I wish I could.
“The dialogue went on for many a minute as the talking heads discussed the significance of this and how it might help heal social wounds.”
THIS is what people posit will help heal social wounds?
I listened to an amazing TED Talk by attorney Bryan Stevenson about our criminal justice system. He talked about how America never went through a true reconciliation period, or even pretended to, after slavery was ended. He pointed at South Africa and Germany as companies that genuinely attempted to address the atrocities committed by their government. America made no true such efforts. Specifically, he spoke about a talk he gave in Germany about the death penalty and how an audience member said something along the lines of, “Of course we don’t have the death penalty. Can you imagine how it’d look if Germany engaged in the systematic killing of it is citizens?” He built on this to hypothesize on how we’d respond if Germany did have a death penalty and disproportionately executed Jewish citizens. He then wondered why we don’t look at our own death penalty the same way and say, “This is a country with a history of enslaving and killing black folk who now use the states to kill and disproportionate amount of black citizens and we generally accept this as the status quo?” It really all traces to the lack of a true effort to address “social wounds” and the mindset espoused in the nonsense cited here indicates that many still believe the onus is on black folks. Ugh. Shit.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html
This is a really good point, Kazzy.
I wish I could take much of the credit, but I’m really just sloppily regurgitating Stevenson’s work. Definitely worth listening to.
“This is a country with a history of enslaving and killing black folk who now use the states to kill and disproportionate amount of black citizens and we generally accept this as the status quo?”
Wow. Just wow! I love it and I am so stealing it!
Credit Stevenson! I had never heard of him but the man deserves a bigger stage.
Seems foolish to me that any mixed ancestry on First Lady Obama’s part would result in any healing of wounds. If only Barack Obama had some white ancestry, I could see that resulting in a new day… /deadpan
Also, Kazzy’s comment is awesome.
I do wonder where we would be if they’d at least gotten the 40 acres and a mule. If I recall, such reparation did make some difference between the Amerindian tribes that got them and those that didn’t.