melancholia

[ciroccoj]

My baby's last day of day care today. He'll be home with me for the summer, then go to JK in September. I can't believe how big he is. Where did the last four years go?

In the news... you know the blow-up over ABC Nightline's tribute to fallen American soldiers, and the Sinclair Broadcast Group pulling the show from their ABC affiliates in 7 major cities, because obviously taking a moment to honour people who've died in the service of your country is an anti-war political statement? I can't actually snark about because it's too damn sad, really. But Chris made a little funny, when I mentioned ABC was owned by Disney.

"Oh really? Good for them. Good for Walt Disney. Good old Walt. He may have his head frozen in a jar, but he's still doing what he can to make the world a safer place for the children."

Here's a link to the story, if anyone's interested.

Sinclair Stations to Boycott 'Nightline' Tribute

Comments

Re: its sort of like this forwarded email

[(Anonymous)]

While the sentiment in that paragraph is worthy of praise, I doubt the story itself is true. The burkha is Afghani, not Iraqi, and the women who wore it could not be outspoken for fear of death; someone pious enough to still wear it would not speak up like that, and would probably not even be unaccompanied in a grocery. Now, perhaps the writer meant a hijab instead of a burkha?

Re: its sort of like this forwarded email

[animaltalker.livejournal.com]

The person who forwarded it is from a very small town in Montana and the friend probably is too and probably doesn't know the difference between a hijab and a burkha.In fact I'm not sure I do and I live in Denver among a very diverse population. As far as the story being true well the email addresses were stripped off for privacy reasons but if you want i'll ask for them and you can ask the man through email if he's lying about it.

We have Muslims of each sect and Hindus, and Buddists, etc, etc. living here in denver mnay of them go to school on my campus at one of the three school r teac or work at one of the three school. We all try to get allong and learn from one another. Of course as much as Americans are decried for not knowing the differences in Middle eastern customs and religions I doubt most Middle easterners know the difference between the various forms of Catholicsm (I.e. Roman catholic, Greek and Russiona orthodox) and all the Protestant forms (Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalean, Lutheran, Quaker, Mennonite, LDS) as well. people are people all over the world we all have are blind spots and we all have or prejudices.

This semester I've had the pleasure of having a man from Saudi Arabia in my class and it has been enlightening to have conversations with him. This man respects me as an instructor, likes me as a person and likes his fellow students, but does not like our country even though he lives in it. That's not to say he likes his own government any more than he likes ours. What I have learned by having classes that are perhaps 15to 20% foreign born and of that predominantly southeast asian, middle eastern, afghani, russian and african is that people are people wherever they are from, most non-americans are not fond of America's government but they still want to be Americans.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

is that people are people wherever they are from, most non-americans are not fond of America's government but they still want to be Americans.

As a foreign-born Canadian, I'm not sure I would agree with this. Many immigrants don't want to leave their home countries, and have no interest in becoming Canadian or American. But they often have little choice. My own mother did not want to leave Chile or be anything other than Chilean, but Chile had a slight mass genocide problem going on in the early 70s, so she left.

I can see it from both sides. I know many immigrants don't have a choice coming here, and many resent being made to feel like charity cases who need to learn to act 'right'. But I also know how frustrating it is sometimes for native-born Ottawans, for example, to accept a massive influx of foreigners who don't follow 'normal' rules of behaviour and ettiquette, who express disdain towards our society, yet who use our social systems, our welfare, public schools, etc etc. It requires a lot of understanding and goodwill from both sides to settle into a livable co-existence.