The State of the Media

As I was surfing around the net, I came across a terrific post by Digby that got me to thinking about this whole Paris Hilton media frenzy today. We've all seen it-- Is she eating? Is she sleeping? What is her mental state?...Blah.Blah.Blah. This coverage is in the forefront of our current news cycle while other 'less important' issues such as Afghanistan (remember that one?), Iraq (yes, it's still going on) and the loss of civil liberties are relegated to page A-35 in your local newspaper. It is amazing to me that Americans are so easily manipulated to care about an issue that literally means nothing in the course of their daily lives. I think the following sums this issue up quite well...


It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I'm not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hopes it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half the American people still believes that Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just unfortunate excess --- an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsession that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Late in the summer of 2006, American news coverage was saturated with the bizarre false confession of a man who claimed to have been present at the death of JonBenet Ramsey --- the six-year-old beauty queen whose unsolved murder eleven years before was responsible for another long-running obsession. A few months prior to John Mark Karr's arrest in Bangkok, the disappearance of a high school senior in Aruba and the intensive search for her body and her presumed murderer consumed thousands of hours of television coverage. Both cases remain unsolved as of this writing, and neither had any appreciable impact on the fate of the Republic.

Like JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. has recently been back at the center of another fit of obsessive-compulsive news, when his hypothetical confession wasn't published and his interviews on television wasn't aired. This particular explosion of "news" was truncated only when a former television sitcom star used racist insults in a night club. And before that we focus on the "Runaway Bride" in Georgia. And before that there was the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy. And of course we can't forget Britney and KFed, and Lindsay and Paris and Nicole, Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch and married Katie Holmes, who gave birth to Suri. And Russell Crowe apparently threw a phone at a hotel concierge.

In early 2007, the wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, embalming, and funeral plans and the legal wrangling over the paternity and custody of her child and disposition of her estate, served as yet another particularly bizarre example of the new priorities in America's news coverage.

And while American television watchers were collectively devoting a hundred million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness.

Al Gore

Al Gore- you remember- he's stiff as a board, he'll put you to sleep, he's fat, he wears earth tones- GASP!

Free Trade and Child Labor

On Bush's recent journey to Latin America, he stopped in Guatemala to remark on the great benefits that 'free trade' offered saying that ‘free trade’ can spread opportunity, provide jobs, and help lift people out of poverty. The reality is that in many countries in which these agreements have been signed, the use of child labor and the lack of worker protections are the norm. These practices have actually increased in the race to become more 'competitive' and attractive to giant multinational corporations. Let's explore this issue a little further by looking at Guatemala, where child labor is common, but is certainly not the only country where it is practiced.

Guatemala, a signator of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), actively employs child labor in its factories. In fact, very close to where Bush made his remarks about free trade stood a food processing plant that employed children as young as 13 that worked in miserable conditions. These 'factories' have fine tuned every aspect of work and have instituted quotas that must be met. For example, in this agro-industrial factory, each head of broccoli had to be cut thirty-seven times and then broken by hand into ninety-seven pieces. These kids handle one head of broccoli every sixty-four seconds and make a cut every seven-tenths of a second. This 'job' is performed six days a week from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Sometimes they must go to work a little earlier when their shift begins at 6:00 AM or 6:30 AM. They stand all day, feet swell, cut themselves numerous times and their wrists swell from doing the same motion over and over. If these kids tell their supervisor that they don't feel well or feel faint and ask to sit down for a moment, the response is that if they leave their place once more, they will be marked absent for the entire day. On top of this, the supervisors tell them to go faster and faster all day long. Most of them earn half of the minimum wage in Guatemala (which is only $6.95 or 52.91 quetzales per day for agricultural work and $7.12 or 54.15 quetzales for nonagricultural work), do not have any type of social security, and are not paid for any holidays.

The plant, Legumex, harvests and processes fruits and vegetables that are in turn exported to the United States. This plant exported more than four million pounds of frozen broccoli, pineapples and melons to the United States last year which was sent to a company called Superior Foods in California. Shortly after this story was first reported back in March, the National Labor Committee stated that Legumex had signed an agreement agreeing to end their child labor practices. While this could be construed as a positive step, it remains to be seen whether or not conditions will, in fact, change.

CAFTA makes no attempt to enforce the labor laws of these Central American countries and has created a race to the bottom in an attempt to be the most 'attractive' for foreign investment. It’s a tragic situation. The next time you sit down with your kids and have a nice meal with those pretty broccoli florets that you bought and the delicious melon for dessert, think about where it comes from. Imagine your kid standing there on the floor all day with bleeding hands and swollen feet packaging these items for your pleasure. Not a pretty picture but sadly it is the reality of ‘free trade’ today.

The Story of Sonia

A 15 year old worker in a food processing plant in Guatemala.

Saturday Blog Roll

Saturday Blog Roll is a chance to promote your own blog, visit other blogs that you may find interesting and make new friends along the way. Simply post a comment with a description of your blog along with the link inside the comments section.

Friday Night Disco Series

What a Classic!

Diplomatic Relations- Highest Bidder Wins!

Chalk one up for China this week. They have managed to convince the neutral country of Costa Rica to break diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan) after more than six decades and establish formal relations with them. As Taiwanese Foreign Minister James Huang said Thursday, China had offered Costa Rica "an astronomical figure" to break off relations with Taiwan. This move by Costa Rica is expected to have a sort of domino effect with countries such as Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay possibly following suit. Due to the fact that Taiwan only has formal relations with 24 countries and many of these in Latin America, these moves could diminish the international standing of Taiwan.

The Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, made very blunt statements this week in announcing his decision to formally end his country's ties to Taiwan. He made it known that the move was dictated by his desire to improve the economy of Costa Rica but did not respond to the allegations of Chinese 'incentives'. Arias announced the line of the new age- "We are looking to strengthen the commercial ties and attract investment" and criticized Taiwan for giving so little aid to its allies. As he noted, "I was always critical of the Taiwanese, and I can say now that I always told them...if you want to have friends in the world, you should be more generous." He said "Without a doubt, we will get more help from China. The reasons are very obvious,” adding that relations with mainland China will “bring greater well being and development for Costa Rica, which cannot remain static in a changing world.” What a nice way to treat a country such as Taiwan that has given Costa Rica millions of dollars in aid over the years and spearheaded numerous projects. As an example, the Costa Rican bridge in the picture above is ironically named the Taiwan-Costa Rica Friendship Bridge and was completed in 2003 for about $26 million dollars all donated by Taiwan. I wonder if the name will remain the same now?

It is sad when a country now decides that it will have or not have relations with another country based on nothing more than how much money is involved. I also find it ironic that the concepts of neutrality, old friendships and many shared ideals are thrown over the bus for the promise of a quick buck and bigger markets. Surprisingly, in these days, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and humanitarian picks China. Gotta love globalization, huh?

G8- Final Thoughts

How do you feel about the G8 Summit that just wrapped up? I personally felt that about the only thing accomplished was that they agreed to agree to talk about many important issues at a later date (same old song and dance). What are your thoughts?