It's that time of the day again...

...I'm scoffing and bitching at the TV.

[Note: This is in the larger context of President Obama's reaction to the arrest of Professor Gates.]

Watching the news here, you get the impression that 1) the President called the arresting policemen stupid, and 2) that he started a race controversy when he did so.

As for 1) "...acted stupidly..." does not equal "are stupid". Adjectives and adverbs...my English tutees also have trouble with those. Still...condemning actions or condemning actors. I would say the difference is somewhat significant. But that's just me.

And about 2) the tensions regarding race, and the controversy around racial profiling in particular are not Obama's creations. In a very twisted way, it would be great if they were. Because then it would be easier to resolve...6 months worth of baggage are a lot easier to work through than a country's entire history and the history of colonialism and imperialism before that.

And yet, shocking as it is, that merely made me roll my eyes.
What really bugged me was one simple question, from the news anchor to their correspondent:

Can a black president really be neutral in a conflict about race?

Such a simple question, yet so very revealing. I hate this assumption. That Caucasian isn't really a race. That a cottage cheese-complexion precludes a racial agenda whereas all other complexions come with one automatically (and it's completely uniform, too). That isn't just preposterous, it also flies in the face of reality. Blatantly. Sometimes it's even wearing distinctive white robes and hoods, or brown uniforms.

En lieu of a lengthy and half-informed diatribe about othering, I'd like to humbly suggest somebody who can be neutral in a conflict about race:

Dirty Words

Spot the contradiction, anyone?

"I am by no means a feminist, but I am definitely for equal rights."

Kelly Clarkson, during a visit to Austria for the Women's World Awards Gala.

The mothers of missing children...

...are going through a kind of hell I cannot even begin to imagine.

Which is why I was so speechless (and then so angry) when I read this, this, this and this today, followed by one of the articles the others were talking about, in the Daily Mail.

I already knew that some missing children receive more media attention than others. Al Jazeera Int did a short feature contrasting media coverage of Madeleine McCann and several other (non-white, non-British, non-Middle class) missing children only a few days after Maddy went missing (I remember this because it was probably their 2nd week on the air, and that was the moment when I became a truly committed fangirl).

Back then, I tried to rationalize this knowledge (studying PR will do that to you) - those media outlets were catering to their target audiences, who, in turn, are more likely to respond to a human interest story if they feel that it affects them (or their own group) intimately.
Yeah, I know...that didn't exactly satisfy me either.

However, as if it weren't vile enough to be make victims of crime almost invisible based on sales projections, some journalists seem to have taken it upon themselves to go one step further.
Apparently, it is not enough to spend days (or months) in complete anguish because you don't know where your child is. No, it is also important that the media tell you exactly how wrongly you are handling the situation, how you are a miserable failure as a mother (and as a person, obviously), and how everything is really your fault.

So, Kate McCann was attacked for being too thin?
I suppose not knowing where your daughter is and what happened to her will diminish a person's appetite. Had she gone to some of those renowned Spanish restaurants she would have been attacked for being callous and then, presumably, for being too fat.
Resorting to this kind of attack is not just cruel, it's also pathetic enough to be completely ridiculous. But I suppose there was little else to criticize her for, what with her being middle class and married to the father of her child, and all...

...unlike Karen Matthews and Fiona MacKeown.

I can't even articulate how disgusting this is.

Chairness

Today, I found something that I wrote a couple of years ago, inspired by a note on one of the lecture programs at my university.
It struck a cord with me, since I've been doing a lot of thinking about "-isms", lately.

"This lecture will explore the 'chairness' of chairs"

The audience gasped in anticipation of what the venerable professor had to say. What were his findings? What did it take to be a chair? Were some chairs more chair than other chairs? And, most importantly, would they be chair enough?
The scholar prolonged his dramatic pause by letting his gaze wander through the auditorium, slowly, as if silently analyzing who amongst them were fit to be chairs.
Some of the listeners shifted audibly, their own fears and insecurities once again in the forefront of their minds. Had they not known all along that it did matter? That it was important to have four legs instead of just three, and a decent back, and armrests? And now, in only a few moments, the professor was going to make their insufficiency official. They just knew it - there was very little hope it could ever be different - you needed armrests, after all, to be a decent chair.