From thoughts into words

Today everybody seems to have an opinion on the Republican loss in the Presidential elections. So I’m going to jump onto the bandwagon: First of all, I don’t think the loss came as a surprise. The Obama campaign worked long and hard, and they had a long-term strategy. They were also largely consistent in maintaining that strategy, even when faced with criticism from pundits on the left. The result: they did their swing-state math just right and were able to get enough support to win the electoral votes in the most crucial states. The team behind Obama plays politics like a game of chess. Almost every move they make fits into a larger strategy and anticipates the likely Republican responses. And they have studied their quarry pretty well: their predictions are usually right. The mistake that the folks on the Republican side make is to consistently ignore this fact. They have always portrayed Obama, a true centrist if there ever was one, as a liberal on the far left, acting to fulfi...

During an interview on a North Carolina radio show yesterday, the interviewer asked Mitt Romney’s son, Tagg, how he felt when he heard “the president of the United States call your dad a liar.” Tagg’s response was vivid: Jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the stage and take a swing at him. But you know you can't do that because, well, first because there's a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because that's the nature of the process. He was being honest. It must be unbelievably hard to watch someone you love on the stage taking the figurative punches. Presidential campaigns are brutal and thankless. And, for those who are fortunate enough to win the seat, the ultimate job involves more of the same. To be frank, I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone in their right mind would want to be president of a nation, let alone a powerful nation. I know for a fact that I would not have the capacity to run for such a seat, or to supp...

Those of you who are following the news online will notice that there's an debate raging about a picture that depicts a semi-nude Michelle Obama on the cover of a Spanish magazine. You can read about it on the Huffington Post . As you will notice, there are two issues being addressed. One is the decision of the magazine editors to feature the portrait on the magazine cover. The second is the decision of the original artist, Karine Percheron Daniels, to create the image in the first place. With respect to the former, I have no idea what the motivation of the magazine editors was in the first place or how the image is related to the featured articles of the issue. So I can't speak authoritatively about it. With respect to the latter, it is indicated that the picture of Michelle Obama is part of Daniels' "Famous Nudes" series. Other personalities depicted in the series include Queen Elizabeth II, Michael Jackson, Eva Peron, Prince William, his wife Catherine, C...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/turn-tv-off.html I’ve been thinking about the impact that the media has on our self-perception as women, minorities, etc, because it’s something that interests me. Much of what I’ve encountered is negative. For instance, the scarcity of positive black role models in the TV and print media leaves children feeling that there is not much for them to aspire to. As for black females, they take away from the media the idea that dark tones of skin and frizzy hair are to be detested, as are curvy figures. This is heart-breaking, of course. But I also read something that got me wondering. It was an article about media consumption patterns among different racial and ethnic groups . According to the piece, black children spent significantly more time watching television programming than kids of any other ethnic group. That made me think about the roles we played as consumers, whether active or passive. And I did wonder whether there ...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-hivaids-religion-and-public-health.html Over the years I have lost many to HIV/AIDS: family and friends. I can’t tell you how many, though. I stopped counting a while back. However, I can tell you that, because of the impact of HIV/AIDS on my life, I know what stigma is. I know what it is like to watch people sink into depression, lose hope and die because those who matter most to them have rejected them.  HIV/AIDS as we have experienced it in the East African context has struck the family as a whole: men and women in their prime and young children have been the typical victims. Our AIDS story has had much to do with heterosexuality. So one can’t simply label HIV/ AIDS a “gay disease” as has tended to happen in the US. Our governments have had to address AIDS as a national crisis because it has stricken the mainstream. In nations such as the US, where the tendency has been to associate the disease with sexual and ethnic minoritie...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/07/problem-solving-is-skill-that-we.html I've had the good fortune to live and work with people who have devoted themselves to solving problems. They are really the unsung heroes of our communities. They are the ones who fix the things that are broken in our systems or carve out new paths to bypass the old, dysfunctional ones. These people work in a variety of fields. I'm not just talking about those who work in healthcare, law, social work, or pastoral care. I'm talking about people in almost any field out there. Heck, I could even be talking about you. MUCH ADO OVER NOTHING I've come to realize over time that people in general spend a lot of time and energy making much ado over nothing. We invest so much capital in symbolic battles against those whom we perceive as our enemies, and we do this in big ways and small ways. People who spend much of their free time gossiping about and undermining personal enemies do it. So do...

I've learnt a few important things about writing over the years. They follow below: Writing anything of good quality, whether a short story, novel, poem, academic paper, or web copy is hard work. Writing constructive criticism about another person's work is challenging. Writing destructive criticism about another person's work is easy. Keeping an open mind as others critique your work is difficult. My point of entry into this subject is my cumulative experience as a teacher, a student, an editor, and a writer. So I have had occasion to experience both sides of the coin: I have been the writer, and I have also been the critic. I know how challenging it is to gather one's thoughts into one coherent stream and to set them down in black and white. I do it every single week on this blog and elsewhere. The final product is rarely what I envisioned when I first set out to write. On a good day, that is fine, because I am still satisfied with what I've written. On ...

I just read  this article about victim blaming . I like the fact that young men are stepping out and condemning rape in unambiguous terms. But there is one thing about the article that I find troubling. It's the second paragraph: Women staying out late in foreign places dressed in tight, skimpy clothes with some alcohol in their systems are often warned to be smart and aware of their surroundings. These type of warnings stem from the idea that if women look or act a certain way, they must be asking for it … right? Really? Telling a woman to be smart and aware of her surroundings in a foreign country, to pay attention to her alcohol consumption and her clothing is victim blaming? What exactly is the suggested alternative? If you're in charge of a bunch of kids studying abroad in a conservative nation, are you actually going to tell them to dress in a fashion calculated to rile the locals? Are you going to tell them to go out and drink to their heart's content? ...

I wrote this piece one month ago, in early June. It has since been overtaken by events such as the deportation of a group of Africans living in Israel. The recent racist comments by Israeli MK, Miri Regev , about Africans living in Israel have spawned much passionate debate online and offline. They have certainly got me thinking about the unique place of the state of Israel in modern history, and about racism and xenophonia in broader terms. To me, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred directed at those who are different must be condemned. At the same time, I think it is important to understand why exactly it is that people hate others. Hatred, like all other things human, does not just spring into existence fully-formed. It develops over time, and is reinforced by certain ways of thinking and of remembering the past. I am not naive enough to think that we will someday be able to eliminate all forms of hatred. But I do think that understanding the motivations that pro...

It must have been two and a half weeks ago that I read this very interesting article by Britney Wilson about how members of minority groups are sometimes guilty of practicing racial profiling when dealing with members of the same ethnicity. Wilson was writing specifically about the negative stereotypes that some black people have about young, black men. Her conclusion was a powerful one: People are people. We cannot stigmatize and judge them on one hand, while campaigning against it on the other. As we work to get society to stop stereotyping, judging, and fearing our sons, we cannot continue to perpetuate these attitudes ourselves. I thought it was a wonderful piece of writing. You see, I believe that, in order to make a genuine difference in society, we have to admit to our own culpability as individuals and as communities. It is easy to talk about the racial or ethnic biases of others, but much more challenging to talk about our own biases towards others and towards our own...

Imagine a situation where two groups of construction workers are ostensibly working together to build one house, but insist on following entirely different blueprints. They spend the whole day working on the site, with their interactions frequently exploding into arguments over which plan is better. And, whenever they can, they sabotage each other’s previous efforts. It would be laughable to imagine that, together, these two groups would actually be able to put up a stable structure. And yet that is what polarized partisan politics is all about. RED VS. BLUE In case you're wondering what brought these thoughts to my mind, I am following Darrell Issa’s latest crusade , which seems to be geared at humiliating Eric Holder into resigning. For the record, I think the "Fast and Furious" probe is absolutely necessary. The operation was deeply flawed, and the onus is on any responsible government to find out what went wrong and why. In my opinion, however, the direction ...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/06/beauty-is-scam.html Thanks to " Victoria's Secret Models, Runway Walking and Booty Paint ," an article by Erika Nicole Kendall, I got the opportunity to discover a December 2009 article by Leah Chernikoff that touches on some of the behind-the-scenes goings-on in the fashion industry. Apparently, "countless hours" go "into making the most beautiful women in the world look so ethereally sexy." Pay close attention to the words of Selita Ebanks in "Victoria's Secret Angels strut runway in $3 million bras, 100 pounds of glitter," the second article. Ebanks, one of the models in the Victoria Secret Angels show, shared an open fashion secret: "People don't realize that there are about 20 layers of makeup on my butt alone." The article goes on to describe the labor-intensive processes that go into making that perfect shot: In addition to body makeup, which Ebanks estim...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-schrodingers-rapist-and-construction.html An online search for the term "Schrodinger's rapist" led me to some very interesting articles, including the two listed below: 1. Schrodinger's rapist: or a guy's guide to approaching women without being maced 2. Schrodinger's rapist and Schrodinger's racist THE SITUATION I strongly recommend that you read these articles, because they bring into focus the all-important issue of setting boundaries and respecting them. Both articles address, to some extent, interactions between a man and a woman who are relative strangers to each other. They point out the degree to which the average woman has to be extra cautious when interacting with a man, because she has no way of knowing whether or not he poses a threat to her. He might turn out to be a rapist; he might turn out not to be one. But because rapists don't wear neon signs on their foreheads declaring that th...