Herding Grumpy Cats

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Off to the Polls We Go

Just yesterday, a rocket blew up on the launch pad and Jose Canseco emulated Plaxico Burress by accidentally shooting himself.  Last week, a gunman murdered a Canadian soldier, a fourteen-year-old boy opened fire in a Washington State school cafeteria, and a hatchet-wielding extremist attacked four policemen in New York.  Elsewhere, women are executed for killing their rapists in Iraq and Iran, a landslide kills hundreds in Sri Lanka, Ebola continues to rage in West Africa, and Kim Jong Un resurfaces for a photo-op at a North Korean orphanage that houses no orphans. 

Today, Russia is reported to have cyber-attacked the White House, the head of the Secret Service prostitution probe is himself tied to prostitution, and Sarah Palin announces she wants to run for public office again. The United States elections are still six days away, and we are drowning in negative ads and gasbag predictions. No wonder everyone is grumpy, for reasons profound and trivial.  I’m so grumpy that I’m posting illustrations of cats and Disney characters, neither group being one I find particularly endearing.

GRUMPY

There’s a new barrage of polls showing that the U.S. electorate:  dislikes President Obama, despises Congress, hates gridlock (but also believes that compromise is tantamount to spinelessness), and thinks the country is ‘going in the wrong direction.’  In other words, it’s in an extremely grumpy mood.  So are the candidates.  It seems that not only are the campaigns almost exclusively negative; they are meanspiritedly, nitpickingly, mendaciously so.  Further, we who live in ‘swing states’ are the displeased recipients of constant telephone calls from various groups trying to push us into voting against someone or some position.  After the twelfth call from the Karl Rove American Crossroads PAC, I ended up screaming at the somehow unperturbed automated voice to stop harassing me . . . grumpiness having morphed into rage. 

The only suspense in this cranky miasma is the percentage of voters who will actually vote in order to register their bad temper versus those who will stay home and complain about the results they had no hand in producing.

SLEEPY

Another thing that makes me grumpy:  this election season isn’t really very entertaining.  Two years ago was a hoot, a-bristle with loopy politicians making insanely ridiculous pronouncements (remember Todd Aiken’s legitimate rape?  Herman Cain’s manly man’s pizza?  Mitt Romney’s binders full of women? Michele Bachmann’s defense of carbon dioxide?  Ah, good times . . .).  This year is downright boring. 

Countrywide, Republican candidates resemble alien abductees whose mind-control implants make them repeat the identical slogan – “A vote for [insert Democratic opponent’s name] is a vote for Obama.”  When Democratic candidates try to do the national referendum thing, it’s also consistently shorthanded through mentions of “the do-nothing Congress.”  And, except for hog-castrator Joni Ernst of Iowa, there aren’t even colorful characters.  In my state, for example, we did have an absolutely crazy candidate – Greg Brannon, who ran against fluoridation and food-stamp slavery.  Unfortunately for North Carolina’s political merriment quotient, the surviving Republican Senatorial candidate is as amusing as burnt toast while the Democratic incumbent is dutifully dull.  (To be fair, she does brandish some actual issues that at least bring a certain amount of concreteness to her campaign in an otherwise vaporous political atmosphere.) 

Yes, there’s still Rick Perry stumbling around somewhere, but he’s not running for office at the moment.  I know it’s too much to ask for the return of the spatially and temporally challenged Dan Quayle (“I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix.”  Or: “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history.  I mean in this century’s history.  But I didn’t live in this century.”), but can’t we do better than monotone incantations about ‘growing good jobs’ and ‘getting things done’?  In today’s news environment, where a politician’s misstatement or malapropism becomes an existential crisis, probably not.  Yawn. 

DOPEY

The problem is that downright willful stupidity is not funny any more.  There’s too much of it.  Certainly among the electorate itself, about 30% of which believes that it’s time for an armed revolution, that gay people can and should choose to become straight, that President Obama is a Muslim, and that another war in Iraq is an excellent idea.  In addition, about 30% of our fellow citizens cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a world map, 20% maintain that the sun revolves around the earth, and more can name the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of our government. 

But let’s not let politicians off the hook.  Congressman Phil Gingrey (Georgia) maintains that immigrant children from Mexico and Central America can carry Ebola over our ‘unprotected’ southern border.  Rep. Louis Gohmert (Texas) holds that caribou enjoy the warmth of oil pipelines but that foreign aid to China will make that country sell us food with dogs and cats in it.  Governor Jan Brewer (Arizona) claims that “life begins from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” And whereas Gov. Paul LePage of Maine believes that climate change will be good for his state, most other oil-funded politicians either deny that it’s happening at all, falsely argue that there’s no scientific consensus about it, or – when asked directly if they believe that climate change exists -- weasel out with the ‘I’m not a scientist’ dodge.

DOC

They may not be scientists, but they sure can be medical doctors . . . whether it’s male politicians pontificating on women’s health or ambitious governors ignoring public health professionals’ advice and confining medical workers returning from West Africa to makeshift quarantine yurts. 

It’s shameful how Ebola is being tricked out as a campaign issue.  Ironically, ‘Dr.’ Rand Paul is among the most egregious, stating that the Obama administration’s devotion to ‘political correctness’ has warped its decision-making about the disease, worrying that ‘whole shiploads’ of American soldiers may become infected, and (no doubt relying on his self-certified expertise as an eye doctor) disagreeing with the head of the Center for Disease Control about Ebola’s transmissibility.  Lesser lights are content with blaming the president for lack of leadership on the issue, although some (with a worried glance toward 2016) also blame the State Department’s lack of vigilance.  Speaking of 2016:  Governor or should we say Doctor Chris Christie (New Jersey) – he of the big, tough quarantine decree – is now engaged in an unseemly verbal battle with the woman he clapped into an isolation tent, evidently trying to rebuild his image as an oversized Joe Pesci who don’t take no guff (or advice) from no one, no how.  Show the respect, will ya?

SNEEZY

These maneuvers would not work without the bloated public panic Ebola has engendered in the United States.  I’m too grumpy to go into the irrational fears and counterproductive actions this panic has caused, particularly irritating when considering the very real horrors the disease has brought upon Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.  One example will suffice: despite overwhelming medical evidence to the contrary, some people are convinced that Ebola has ‘gone airborne,’ or soon will, making it as catchable as the common cold. Suggestion:  invest in whoever makes those fashionable surgical masks favored by the Japanese.

Although condemned as tasteless, Ebola-themed Halloween costumes may be a good thing, as they suggest that not everyone is quaking in their Tyvek suits, organizing parents’ groups to ban students of Rwandan or South African heritage from attending school.  You can buy a ‘sexy Ebola nurse costume’ for only $59.99 (boots sold separately).

BASHFUL . . . Oh, sorry:  CASHFUL

Here’s where I can be grumpily bipartisan.  Both Democrats and Republicans are floating on a giant tide of cash:  small-donor contributions, millionaire-funded PACS, greedy special interests, dark money from god-knows-where.  My state has the dubious distinction of hosting the most expensive Senate Race in 2014 -- $100 million and counting.  This obscene amount of money has bought over 90,000 unpleasant ads, 89,999 of which I’m sure I’ve seen at least once.

A lot of the blame goes to the Supreme Court and the noxious Citizens United ruling, augmented by this April’s McCutcheon decision.  But it devolves upon us, too . . . as we continue to wring our hands at the influence of ‘monied interests’ while we continue to elect politicians in their thrall.  This is one of the main reasons I’m determined to vote (even if poll watchers demand my birth certificate, vaccination record, and tax returns from the last ten years) and will mostly vote Democratic . . . I truly fear what will happen if the Supreme Court becomes even more conservative than it now is.  Whatever happened to campaign finance reform? 

HAPPY

Election Day is November 4, and I for one will be happy to see it go.  Even though some races impacting control of the Senate may drag into December (or later) due to slow tabulation, lawsuits, and run-offs, at least the onslaught of political ads and political commentary will stop, as party operatives can stop herding the grumpy cats that comprise this year’s cantankerous electorate.  I’m happy to turn my thoughts to the upcoming holidays and trade non-unionized dwarfs for Santa’s elves, crabby felines for Thanksgiving turkeys.

Autumn in a Very, Very Small Town

A Real Epidemic and the Best Halloween Ever

In the summer of 1955, a polio epidemic attacked the United States, and its epicenter was Appleton, Wisconsin.  The infection rate in Appleton and the surrounding county was 128.48 per 100,000, compared with 37.55 per 100,000 in Boston, Mass., the nation's second-hardest hit area. 

My family was in the process of moving from Marinette, Wisconsin, to Appleton that very summer.  My parents prudently decided to ship me and my little sister Alison to our maternal grandparents, who lived in the tiny town of Yorkville, Illinois . . . far enough from the polio outbreak to be a safe haven.  Mom was with us most of the summer, and Dad visited when he could.  Because we had spent a week or so every summer in Yorkville, this extended visit didn’t seem unsettling: I loved my grandparents’ big house on the river, and I was happy doing pretty much nothing other than reading and playing the piano.  There were fireflies to catch and ice cream to eat in the warm evenings while the adults played bridge and whispered about illness and death.

Things changed when the leaves began to turn.  My mother left Yorkville to join my father in Appleton, to look for a house and to begin negotiating how to fit into a new town and a new life.   The polio epidemic there was subsiding slowly although the threat remained; my parents decided that their children were safer in Yorkville, at least until Christmas.  So my sister and I stayed with my grandparents, and I entered third grade.  I was seven years old.  

The main Bristol-Yorkville school building was constructed in 1888; my mother and her sisters also attended school there.

I should explain that in 1955, what we knew as ‘Yorkville’ was actually two villages separated by the Illinois Fox River: Yorkville proper to the south, and Bristol to the north.  Each micro-municipality numbered about 500 people, if you counted dogs, cats, and chickens.  So we’re talking about an extremely small town, or towns . . . so small that the only school (grades 1 through 12) was a no-nonsense brick building two blocks north of my grandparents’ house, in the more genteel portion of this bifurcated place.  The school ‘belonged’ to those of us who lived on the north side of the river (often, families like mine who had lived there for generations).  The kids from the south side were . . . well, kids from the south side.

As an entering third-grader, I needed what any third-grade girl needed – a best friend.  I found one right away, a sweet girl from a big family that lived on the south side.  To get to school, she had to walk from ‘below town’ (‘town’ was directly across the bridge that divided north from south, Bristol and Yorkville); we would join up in the ‘City’ Park a block up from my grandparents’ house and proceed the half block to school.  In my memory, walking through the park was always leisurely, a series of small discoveries (really red maple leaves that hadn’t been there the day before, a lost biscuit from a weekend bake sale).  I don’t remember much about school itself, except that on the rare occasions I had homework, I’d sneak into what had been my Aunt Mary’s bedroom – enchanting in yellow and shelves full of painted porcelain – to study at her ‘desk,’ which was really a vanity table.

This changing-venue maneuver wasn’t really necessary.  That autumn, my sister and I had moved from the back bedroom of my grandparents’ house (a somewhat claustrophobic space that used to be reserved for the ‘hired girl’) to the airy, blue-and-white double bedroom that had been shared by my mother and my Aunt Eleanor, a room that had generous windows overlooking the river . . . and a vanity I certainly could have used as a desk.  But because I was in school and my sister, just turned four years old, was not, I guess I needed my own separate space.

The bridge between Bristol and Yorkville as seen from a corner of my grandparents’ backyard; a new bridge – much less elegant – was built in 1985.

Space.  That’s what Yorkville/Bristol gave me that lovely autumn.  It’s not that I had been particularly restricted: in Marinette, when I was six or younger, I had walked unaccompanied to school (behind my house, but one had to go around the block), to my best friend’s home down the street, to the corner store, to the library on the river.  But Marinette – a hardworking town of then about 10,000, suffused with the paper industry’s sulfur smell and the demographic divisions that followed – had not been a free-range environment for a little kid.  I always knew that my town had ‘other’ places (downtown with its big department store and bars and even less reputable dives, ‘rougher’ neighborhoods where we knew no one) where I could not wander and would not be welcome. 

But my grandparents’ little town was wide open to me.  Of course, it was much smaller than Marinette; even a third-grader, with a bit of resolve, could walk from one end to the other (Yorkville then was very vertical . . . strung along on Bridge Street, from top to bottom, but only a couple of blocks wide) and feel as if she had tramped through the whole place. What I didn’t understand that autumn was that free movement in that tiny double village was also a function of local history and social custom.

Everybody knew my grandparents and my grandfather’s family.  My great-grandfather had been the town’s first lawyer and had founded a bank there.  My grandfather followed in his footsteps, and brought his college-educated bride from Wisconsin to enrich his life . . . and the town’s.  [At this point, all I need to say is: read Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street to understand this part of my family.]  Various relatives were scattered about, in town (like Aunt Alice, across the street) and on neighboring farms (like Uncle John, just outside Bristol, or other, more hazy people, like Aunt Wathena, with whom I associate osage oranges).  My mother and her sisters had been popular and eligible girls in Yorkville (my grandparents had the good sense to send them to college far away, and none of them married Yorkville boys . . . although their cousin Joyce did marry a local man who became the first mayor of consolidated Yorkville/Bristol in 1957.  But I digress). 

The point is: it was easy for my grandparents to let me go alone ‘over town’ across the bridge, to visit the library, to pick up the mail (there was then no home delivery), to indulge in a double chocolate soda at Webster’s drugstore . . . or walk to school, or even to the Game Farm (basically a fowl reserve with a few farm animals on display) northwest of the school, bordering on rich farm land.  Everybody knew my grandparents, had known my mother, and therefore knew me.  I could neither get lost nor get in serious trouble.  All the space I could possibly conceive of, there, was mine.

The original Kendall County courthouse, Yorkville, built in 1864 and reconstructed after a fire in 1887; my grandfather and great-grandfather had law offices there.

Branches became bare, and Halloween was near.  My southside best friend invited me to go trick-or-treating.  I was a reasonably well-behaved granddaughter, partially because I was a relatively self-sufficient child and partially because I didn’t want to provoke my grandmother’s sharp tongue (she was known for pronouncements such as “Alison is clumsy, but [pause in which I would wait for the rare word of praise] Deborah is stubborn”).  Therefore, I asked her permission, which – after a few acid comments about my friend’s family, who although having lived in Yorkville for as long or longer than she had, were, to her, marginally disreputable, probably because they were not white-collar folks – she granted.

I remember little about a costume (pillow sack for treats?  scraps from Grandma’s sewing basket to approximate a pirate?)  What was important was that my friend, in company with her siblings and a small gang of other southsiders, called for me at my grandparents just after sunset . . . and we were off.  Like, all over the place.  Northside, Southside, Bristol and Yorkville.  No Mary Jane, Milk Dud, or apple (yuck) went unclaimed.  When a rumor reached us that a house was giving out full-sized, real candy bars, we hit it three times.  We sat in the middle of the bridge and exchanged treats that we didn’t like for ones we did.  It seemed like midnight, or later, but it was probably nine o’clock – still fairly late for an unsupervised seven-year old – when I got back to my grandparents’ house. Playing cards in the library, Grandma and Grandpa reminded me that it was time for bed. 

Upstairs, I woke my little sister.  Alison had been too young to go trick-or-treating, so I shared some of my loot (not, I’m sure, the full-sized Hershey bars, but still . . . ).  I fell asleep feeling as if I owned the world.

Halloween many, many years later . . . students and friends, David Letterman, the Mad Monk, Wall Street crooks, the local ghoul . . .

That Halloween was almost sixty years ago.  Since then, I’ve enjoyed many wonderful Halloweens.  When my daughter was young, it was great fun to concoct costumes from whatever was lying about – she was a particularly fetching fortuneteller, a beautiful princess, and even an adorably non-threatening pirate; I remember fondly looking in on her after trick-or-treating, as she painstakingly arranged her candy into arcane categories [size? ingredients? color? desirability?]  that marked a personal Halloween landscape. In later years, I enjoyed hosting Halloween parties for my graduate students (whose costume creativity was a source of endless wonderment), then passing the baton to the Luyendyk brothers, who’ve exceeded anything I ever concocted but let me attend anyway, and kibbutzing on the fantastic Halloween extravaganzas my sister Alison has created.

But that long-ago Halloween, when I was seven years old, remains my best Halloween ever.  Reason number one, as I’ve tried to explain, is that it was the moment in my life that I felt like an autonomous individual . . . free to go where and do what I wanted, even if only for a few hours.  I’ve also tried to explain, however elliptically, reason number two:  that it was a small, circumscribed time that affected me so deeply that I’ve revisited it over the years . . . and have realized that its pleasure was in large part a function of class divisions, social prejudices, and economic disparities, and – yes –responses to a dangerous disease. 

Yet these adult realizations, no matter how important or how true, do not take away the visceral memories of freedom, of the sheer exhilarating joy of being able to go anywhere that I could possibly imagine, which adhered to that best Halloween ever, the capstone of autumn in a very, very small town.

We’re Not In Oz Anymore . . . Or Are We?

Dorothy Must Die

You wouldn’t think the world needs another Wizard of Oz adaptation.  We already have movies, plays, Broadway musicals, comics, cartoons, games, merchandise . . . not to mention the thirteen additional Oz books by L. Frank Baum himself, the nineteen by Ruth Plumly Thomson, the three by Oz illustrator John R. Neill, and a host of others.  But we’ve got a new one -- Danielle Paige’s Dorothy Must Die.  And it’s not bad at all.

I’ll tear them apart.  I may not come out alive, but I’m going in there. 

– Cowardly Lion (MGM, 1939)

The conceit is this: a lonely teenager, Amy Gumm (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), rides a tornado from a Kansas trailer park to a grotesque, sinister Oz.  The Munchkins are enslaved, Glinda is a heartless overseer, the Tin Woodman leads death squads, the no-longer-cowardly Lion is a ravenous killer, and the Scarecrow is a mad scientist conducting infernal experiments on unfortunate Ozites.  Worst of all, Dorothy rules the realm with a conceited, amoral tyrant’s deft touch. 

Amy is recruited by ‘evil’ characters from the whole range of Oz books, notably old Mombi, a surviving wicked witch.  Amy’s mission?  To kill Dorothy.  To do this, she fights and connives her way out of various perils, and she trains with the witches in both magic and martial arts.  Part Katniss Everdeen and part Harry Potter, she’s a perfect Young Adult novel heroine – brave, smart, and moody enough to be a believable teenager – stranded in a typical Young Adult novel dystopia.

As is true with many Young Adult novels, Dorothy Must Die aims at both teens and their parents. In this case, not-so-young adults who have fond memories of the original Wizard of Oz books, and of course of the 1939 movie, will enjoy the creative twists on familiar characters and settings.  The sturdy prose, while not as cleverly sophisticated as J. K. Rowling’s, moves the plot along briskly without much of the dumbed-down syntax that can make this genre unbearable to anyone over twelve.

Of course, some people do go both ways.

– Scarecrow (MGM, 1939)

Showing the good side of a bad Oz character, or vice versa, isn’t a new gimmick (see, for instance, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked).  Danielle Paige, however, inverts almost every character while building in enough ambivalence and mystery that readers truly don’t have a clear ethical perspective or even a clear ‘side’ to root for.  Are Amy’s trainers dedicated to restoring Oz or to furthering their own dark designs?  Is the Wizard, who appears later in the novel, friend or foe?  Is Princess Ozma (readers of the full Baum canon know her well) brain-damaged or biding her time to regain power?  Is Glinda’s twin sister (who insists on good manners) a force for Ozite civility or a malevolent doppelganger?

Most of all, what are Amy Gumm’s motives?  First, of course, is survival.  But there are a lot of possible seconds, including understanding ‘home’ and reconciling herself with her dysfunctional mother . . . and personal empowerment in the face of a drab and sad life in Kansas.  In this sense, she plays against Paige’s to-this-point-despicable Dorothy, who also sees Oz as a compensatory stage on which to enact her ‘true self.’  Dorothy’s metastasizing narcissism is explored in No Place Like Oz, the ‘prequel’ to Dorothy Must Die (available only as an inexpensive e-novella); I don’t think it’s necessary to read the novella, though, to see that Amy and Dorothy are being set up as similar girls facing similar dilemmas but taking different paths.

 Going so soon?  I wouldn’t hear of it.  Why, my little party’s just beginning.

--Wicked Witch of the West (MGM, 1939)

Yet maybe they won’t take different paths.  Dorothy Must Die, which pointedly does not resolve the conflicts it sets up, is obviously the first book in what promises to be an endless stream of sequels (hey, it already has a prequel).  In fact, the next book in the series is scheduled for 2015 publication.  Moreover, the book (and/or its subsequent publications) is already under serious negotiation for a TV series.  Is a film far behind?  Or a graphic novel franchise?  Or a multi-platform video game?

Danielle Paige is in good company.  Due in no small part to Baum’s own efforts, The Wizard of Oz has become the quintessential American fairy tale, the ur-text of the contemporary U.S. Young Adult novel (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn notwithstanding), and a prime example of how a singular work of the imagination can engender a cultural phenomenon that lasts for well over a century.  It’s hard to think that Dorothy Must Die and its forthcoming progeny will measure up to the magnificent 1939 film, to the captivating musical version of Wicked, or – for that matter – to Baum’s own continuations. 

But, again, as a series, it has promise, even in the problematic (but potentially lucrative) genre of the Young Adult novel.   As MGM’s Wicked Witch of the West wisely said:  “that’s not what’s worrying me.  It’s how to do it.  These things must be done delicately . . . or you hurt the spell.”

                     Dorothy Must Die.  Danielle Paige.  New York:  HarperCollins, 2014.

                                             Hardcover, paperback, electronic format.

Of Ebola and AIDS, Sorcery and the State

The experience of Liberia and Haiti shows that the African races are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government.

– Robert Lansing, U.S. Secretary of State (1918)

AIDS demonstrates how economics and politics cannot be separated from disease; indeed, these forces shape our response in powerful ways. 

–Allan Brandt (1988)

Liberia’s history of bad governance and foreign exploitation explains citizens’ reluctance to trust the intentions of government officials and international health workers [regarding Ebola]. Years of extortion by police, vast and highly visible inequalities in wealth and a sense that even aid workers arrive to enrich themselves have taken their toll.

–Ashoka Mukpo (2014)

Two months ago, reporting from Liberia, U.S. citizen Ashoka Mukpo wrote a perceptive article about what one might call the ‘sociology of Ebola.’  Today Mukpo is himself battling the disease, after being evacuated to a hospital in Nebraska.  The U.S. press is characterizing Mukpo as a brave journalist risking his own wellbeing to report truthfully from an afflicted country. 

In contrast, some people are accusing Liberian citizen Thomas Eric Duncan, who died yesterday of Ebola in a Dallas hospital, of a variety of pre-mortem sins.  These include falsifying documents so he could: escape the epidemic, seek medical treatment abroad, or take advantage of what the extreme right calls ‘Obama’s Liberian Amnesty’ to skirt immigration protocols.  (This strange charge seems to refer to the Deferred Enforced Departure directive, instituted by President George W. Bush in 2007, when the Temporary Protected Status for some Liberians was due to expire . . . a directive extended by President Barack Obama. President Obama’s mythical responsibility for the Ebola epidemic, based on his African roots, is such a disturbingly insane theory, albeit one gathering steam with U.S. extremists, that I cannot treat it today, nor can I treat how Ebola is being used in Republican political campaigns.  Stay tuned.)

Whatever degree of accuracy adheres to both characterizations, they share one trait:  they praise or blame the victim, ascribing their fates to individual agency.  People in West Africa often see things from a different perspective, things including why one is struck by disease and how one interprets medical assistance.  To understand some reactions to Ebola ‘on the ground,’ reactions that can seem either ignorant or ungrateful to some Western observers, it may be helpful to refer to the attitudes of Haitians toward the AIDS epidemic that ravaged the country in the late 1980s.

Sending Sida

At the very time that AIDS was being identified as a ‘Haitian disease’ in the United States, the illness was spreading through rural Haiti.  Sida (AIDS in kreyol) was a new phenomenon and thus engendered fear and confusion.  It didn’t seem to be a ‘normal’ sickness that could be treated by herbalists, vodou priests, prayer services, or such Western medicine as was available.  Thus it was frequently attributed to sorcery.  Sida was ‘sent’ against a person, often a person who had offended social norms in some way or who was marginally better off than his neighbors.  But as the epidemic grew, sida attacked ‘innocent’ people as well, and other causes were posited.  Primary among these: a brutal and corrupt government (although Jean-Claude Duvalier had been exiled, the new regime was seen as ‘Duvalierism without Duvalier,’ and murderous oppression continued) and the United States, whose long-standing economic exploitation of Haiti – not to mention its discriminatory policies against Haitian immigrants and would-be immigrants – was seen as a major factor in aggravating the country’s already abject poverty. 

Sorcery might be at work, but indigenous logic looked for reasons behind the poverty that made people so envious or desperate that they might send sida to someone living right next door.  In the countryside and in city slums, people competed for scanty resources – food, water, shelter, employment – made even scantier by the long alliance between kleptocratic Haitian politicians and United States business interests.  NGOs and religious missions dedicated to providing health services were also distrusted; they were suspected of infecting the populace, using people as guinea pigs, or profiting in some manner by their sickness (suspicions based in part on the business of exporting Haitian blood, a trade that stopped only when AIDS hit).

Then there’s racism.  Not only did the blatant racism coloring the first U.S. Occupation (1915-1934) leave permanent scars; a large percentage of Haitians have relatives in the United States, relatives who reported increased anti-Haitian bigotry (not to mention the treatment of ‘illegal Haitian aliens’ in Florida detention centers). 

In sum, while poor Haitians understood sida as an evil that might have as its proximate cause an envious neighbor or a virus, the ultimate causes were dysfunctional government, civil strife, and U.S. exploitation of what had been a paracolony for a century or more, plus white and mulatto disdain for average, darker skinned Haitians, who constitute well over 90% of the population.  Sida was indeed ‘sent’ by enemies.

Ebola is the brainchild of HIV

This is the conclusion of Dr. Gobee Logan, County Medical Officer at Tubmanville Hospital, Liberia.  Dr. Logan evidently has some success treating Ebola patients with a drug from the anti-HIV/AIDS cocktail, a plan he devised after reading that HIV and Ebola replicate inside the body in the same way.

Other sorts of consanguinity are voiced by other doctors.  Dr. Cyril Broderick, former Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Liberia and Director of Research at Firestone-Liberia, directly links Ebola with AIDS in that they are both pathogens deliberately manufactured and disseminated by Western pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. Department of Defense.  And the doctors of the church are not far behind.  Just as some churchmen in Haiti and the United States saw AIDS as a divine punishment, so do many churchmen in Liberia.  In July this year, evangelical protestant pastors, plus Episcopalian and Catholic priests, issued a unanimous resolution:

That God is angry with Liberia, and that Ebola is a plague.  Liberians have to pray and seek God’s forgiveness over the corruption and immoral acts (such as homosexualism, etc.) that continue to penetrate our society.

Ebola is ‘sent’ by God.  And/or big pharma and the United States in general.  And/or by the collusion of the Liberian government with these malevolent interests over the entire history of Liberia (which, of course, began as a United States paracolony sponsored by an uneasy alliance of abolitionists and former slaveholders).  And/or even ‘sent’ by sorcery, as the rumors of uncanny ‘resurrection’ and ‘Ebola ghosts’ suggest.

It’s not surprising that Liberians can be wary of or hostile to medical personnel who wear giant white spacesuits to invade rural communities or who staff clinics and hospitals that are known as places where one is sent to die – or even worse, as places where rapacious conglomerates test poisons and deadly viruses on a victimized populace.

There is a foundational similarity between Haiti’s reaction to AIDS thirty years ago and Liberia’s reaction to Ebola now: a widely held belief that the causes of catastrophic disease are deeply embedded in the country’s history, political economy, and social practice – plus a consequent distrust of the ‘help’ offered by those who may have precipitated the disease in the first place. The fact that these epidemics followed an extended period of political chaos and, in Liberia, of horrific all-out war, both periods marked by U.S. support of venal dictators and refusal to help the imperiled citizenry, only adds to fear and confusion.

Chimpanzees and Bush Meat

Then there’s the common denominator of racism.  In-country racialized attitudes have differing vectors:  in Haiti, the mulatto elites vs. the ‘African’ blacks, in Liberia, the descendants of Black American settlers vs. the indigenous peoples whose land was appropriated, one (the lighter, or ‘more civilized’) supported by the United States (the Reagan administration’s temporary support of Samuel Doe is an exception).  Racism ‘sent’ from the outside – in particular, via Western reportage – also contributes to the difficulties diseased-gripped countries have in dealing with an epidemic.

While poor sanitation, rudimentary medical services, and degraded infrastructure certainly contribute to the spread of infectious disease, the way these conditions often are portrayed plays into centuries of racist discourse.  I.e.:  Africans are dirty, careless, and lazy.  They are to blame for the shabby state of their countries – as if colonialism, enabling craven leaders, and deliberate underdevelopment had no role at all.  Moreover, Africans are savage, atavistic . . . close kin to the chimpanzees from whom they supposedly contracted the disease.

How convenient that both AIDS and Ebola have been traced to African people’s interaction with chimps.  The ‘science’ about disease origins keeps changing, but the reporting does not.  In the 19^th century, ‘sexual encounters’ between African women and male apes were posited to have been the source of venereal disease; in the 20^th century, AIDS was transmitted to humans from apes because humans hunted and consumed apes (a sanitized version of the hoary ‘cannibalism’ calumny); in the 21^st century, Ebola has been traced either to being bitten by a chimpanzee or by eating ‘bushmeat’ (in itself a racially-inflected term for wild game that includes great apes but is most often animals that could have been infected by a chimpanzee).  The face of Ebola and AIDS is . . . a large, violent, disease-ridden monkey?

All that said, it’s predictable that the death of Thomas Eric Duncan can be read darkly, through a racist glass by African Americans and darkly, through a racially inflected conspiracy glass by Liberians and other Africans.  As Chiangozie Nwonwu wrote earlier today:

But, seriously, why would it be difficult to think that Mr Duncan’s death would have served the US state’s interest? Think about a flood of people from Ebola-hit regions of West Africa heading to the land where everyone with Ebola had, until Duncan, survived.

It’s not difficult to think that, particularly given the current U.S. paranoia about illegal (and non-white) immigration (a factor also at play during the Haitian AIDS epidemic).  In my opinion, Duncan’s death was not deliberately ‘sent,’ but his race, ‘foreignness,’ and lack of insurance seem to have shaped the initial, non-vigilant response to his illness. Duncan was caught in a huge web of layered and intersecting causalities, histories, and rumors, when – as far as individual agency goes – it appears all he was trying to do was reunite with his son’s mother, whom he had met in a Cote d’Ivoire refugee camp.  As was Ashoka Mukpo caught.  No doubt a committed journalist and humanitarian, Mukpo has been equally subject to the factors that he wrote about so well, not long ago.

References

[Note:  The first illustration is a street mural in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by Jerry Rosembert Moise. The second is a detail from a sequined banner by the Haitian artist Myrtlande Constant. The third is a photograph of nurses removing a corpse from an unspecified Liberian location.  The fourth is the cover of Newsweek magazine, August 29, 2014.]

Azango, Mae.  “Liberian Doctor Defends 3-5 Days Ebola Treatment with HIV Drug.  AllAfrica 9/29/2014. http://allafrica.com/stories/201409292050.html

Brandt, Allan.  “AIDS:  From Social History to Social Policy.”  In AIDS: The Burdens of History.  Ed. Elizabeth Fee and David Fox.  Berkeley:  U of California P, 1988, pp. 147-151.

Broderick, Cyril. “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?”  Cyril Broderick.  The Daily Observer 9/9/2014

http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/ebola-aids-manufactured-western-pharmaceuticals-us-dod

“DED Granted Country – Liberia.”  Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. Updated 10/1/2014. http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status-deferred-enforced-departure/ded-granted-country-liberia/ded-granted-country-liberia

Doloquee, Franklin.  “Dead Ebola patients resurrect?”  New Dawn Liberia 9/24/2014. http://www.thenewdawnliberia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12763:dead-ebola-patients-resurrect&catid=3:general&Itemid=68

Dubois, Laurent.  Haiti:  The Aftershocks of History.  New York:  Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2012.

Duva, Anjali Mitter.  “Liberia and the United States: A Complex Relationship.”  UNC Global Connections,2002.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/liberia/essays/uspolicy/

Farmer, Paul.  Aids and Accusation:  Haiti and the Geography of Blame.  Berkeley and Los Angeles:  U of California P, 1992.

Flynn, Gerard and Susan Scutti.  “Smuggled Bushmeat is Ebola’s Back Door to America.”  Newsweek 8/29/2014. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/29/smuggled-bushmeat-ebolas-back-door-america-265668.html

“God is Angry with Liberia.”  The Daily Observer 7/31/2014. http://www.liberianobserver.com/news-religion/god-angry-liberia

McNeil, Donald G.  “Chimp to Man to History Books: the Path of AIDS.”  The New York Times 10/18/2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/health/18aids.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Mukpo, Ashoka. “The biggest concern of the Ebola outbreak is political, not medical.”  Al Jazeera America 8/12/2014.  http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/ebola-virus-liberiasierraleonepolitics.html

Nwonwu, Chiagozie.  “Ebola:  Did the U.S. let Thomas Eric Duncan die?”  This is Africa 10/9/2014. http://thisisafrica.me/ebola-u-s-let-thomas-eric-duncan-die/

Owen, James.  “AIDS Origin Traced to Chimp Group in Cameroon.”  National Geographic News 5/25/2006.  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060525-aids-chimps.html

Samb, Saliou and Adam Bailes. “As Ebola stalks West Africa, medics fight mistrust, hostility.” Reuters 7/13/2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/13/health-ebola-westafrica-idUSL6N0PO0V220140713

Seay, Laura and Kim Yi Dionne.  “The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place.”  The Washington Post 8/25/2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/25/othering-ebola-and-the-history-and-politics-of-pointing-at-immigrants-as-potential-disease-vectors/

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.  Haiti, State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism.  New York:  Monthly Review Press, 1990.

The Eternal Return of Politics

Today is the Feast of Saint Francis, when in many Roman Catholic parishes animals of all sorts are blessed.  Heaven knows that United States party animals (I’m referring to Republicans and Democrats) need some divine intervention in order to get back to the business of trying to govern in a sensible manner.  

For that matter, it seems like the world at large could benefit from saintly nudges.  It doesn’t take the literary gifts of Yeats or Achebe to fear that things are falling apart in ways big and small.  For me, as a small-time essayist rather than a gifted poet or novelist (alas), there’s too much going on in the world that makes me curious, ruminative, or just plain angry to stick to writing book reviews. 

Therefore, I’m reviving my old blog so I can mark some virtual space for rants, commentaries, and meditations about world, national, local, sometimes personal events.  And still, on occasion, about books.  It’s not that I’ve all suddenly stopped reading.  As people close to me know, I read about five books a week and have done so ever since I knew the alphabet.  And it’s not that there aren’t fascinating books I’ve wanted to discuss and to recommend. 

But hey, it’s election season.  And there’s another Middle East war.  And a plague that may reach Biblical proportions.  And a Vatican synod about the family that may have huge consequences.  And melting glaciers and missing schoolgirls and NFL scandals and, and, and. . .

So look for the next blog entry soon.  It probably won’t be a book review.  Then again, it might.  After all, another Francis – St. Francis de Sales – is the patron of writers and journalists and, by extension, books.  While he had his hectoring side, he also could offer good advice that applies to writing about the world, whether manifested in books or in politics:  “Attend to the Business of Life Carefully, but without Eagerness or Over-Anxiety” – an excellent admonition that’s easier to admire than to follow.  But I’ll try.

(If you want to see what my old, often but not always political blog looked like, here's the URL to the first one I wrote (the others are archived by month on the side.  I was a writing fool in 2012!  http://deblog2012.blogspot.com/2012/02/font-face-font-family-cambriap.html)