Page 2 The Skanner October 3, 2018
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Opinion
President Laughingstock Makes Fool of US
O
ur
45th
President
rushed back from his
United Nations meeting
in New York to watch the
hearing of his Supreme Court
nominee, Brett Kavanaugh,
and his accuser Dr. Christine
Blasey Ford. Reportedly, he
was impressed by Dr. Ford,
but excited by Kavanaugh’s
belligerently offensive ses-
sion with the senators.
From my perspective, Kava-
naugh was disgraceful. He at-
tacked Democratic senators,
at one point asking Minneso-
ta Senator Amy Klobuchar if
she had a drinking problem.
His angry, entitled tempera-
ment was inconsistent with
Supreme Court service. But
by the time this is published
he is likely to have been voted
onto the court.
While the Supreme Court
deliberations have dominat-
ed the news, it is essential
to consider the way that 45
appeared on the world stage.
First, he was inexplicably and
rudely late to the UN, signal-
ing his own contempt for the
organization and its mem-
bers. Indeed, according to
New Yorker reporter Robin
Wright, the UN had to scram-
ble to find another speaker
Julianne
Malveaux
NNPA
Columnist
to fill in 45’s assigned time.
Then, just minutes after 45
began talking, the assembled
group started laughing at
him.
Undoubtedly, they were
amused about his assertions
of having done more than any
other Administration in US
history. 45 was speaking to
more than one hundred and
thirty heads of state and doz-
ens of other delegations. They
laughed because 45 is truly
funny.
As he ran for President, 45
constantly scolded that our
country was the “laughing-
stock” of the world. Then he
stood in front of other world
leaders and proved them cor-
rect.
Our nation is not a laughing-
stock, but President Trump
surely is. He is out of touch
with the rest of the world,
out of order in his dealings
with others, and out of con-
trol with his myopic “America
First” philosophy.
We may still be the most
powerful nation in the world,
but we are holding onto that
perch only tentatively. We’re
not the largest country in the
world. The population of In-
dia, at 1.35 billion, or the pop-
ulation of China, the world’s
most populous nation, at 1.41
billion people, dwarfs our
“
He stood in
front of other
world leaders
and proved
them correct
population of roughly 326
million people. We are a scant
4.3 percent of the world pop-
ulation. India is 17.7 percent
of the world population, and
China is a whopping 18.5 per-
cent of the world population.
Population size is not nec-
essarily an indicator of pow-
er, and most concede that the
United States remains an in-
fluential world leader. But we
are a world leader now led by
a clown, the laughingstock of
the world. And in embracing
an “America First” doctrine,
we isolate ourselves from
others and diminish our own
world power.
Our power has come from
our ability to play well in the
world. It has come from our
embrace of globalism. Indeed,
our economic growth has
often been a function of our
global role.
People want to come to the
United States, to study the
United States, to vacation in
the United States and to en-
joy the products and brands
of the United States (McDon-
ald’s and Nike are but two ex-
amples). Our President’s be-
havior repels people from the
United States instead of at-
tracting people to us. His jin-
goistic “America First” speech
belied decades of internation-
al cooperation. His notion
that nations are better off go-
ing it alone than working in
collaboration is isolationist
nonsense. His speech would
have been better delivered to
his sycophants who drink his
Fool-Aid than to a thoughtful
international audience of his
peer world leaders.
Read the rest of this commentary at
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The Significance of ‘Sorry to Bother You’
I
was excited about the pros-
pect of seeing Boots Riley’s
Sorry to Bother You from
the moment that I saw the
advertisements. Yet I was not
prepared for the totality of
the film because the ads em-
phasized only one piece: the
white voice.
Without giving away the
plot, the “White voice” refers
to how workers in a myth-
ical telemarking firm are
supposed to speak—over the
phone—with potential cli-
ents. In order to win the favor
of white clients, they are to
speak with a “White voice.”
Every African American,
and for that matter, every
person of color in the USA,
is familiar with the basic no-
tion of a “White voice.” We
are hit with that on a regular
basis whereby our language,
accents, etc., are viewed as
somehow outside of the main-
stream and, in many cases,
Bill
Fletcher Jr.
The Global
African
perceived as threatening.
Riley took this to another
level as a way of critiquing US
society. He does it in an out-
standing manner.
The film, however, is much
more than about the White
voice. It is about class strug-
gle, racial justice struggle,
gender justice struggle; in
fact, it is about the very no-
tion of collective struggle.
And the setting is a near-fu-
ture USA with a telemarket-
ing firm whose workers look
just like the working class of
today. These workers strug-
gle to band together to build
a labor union and fight for
their rights but also to chal-
lenge a mega-company that
has dangerous plans afoot.
“
Global cap-
italism is
grinding us
all down and
destroying
our humanity
“Sorry to Bother You” mix-
es satire, near-future science
fiction, an appreciation of
collective struggle, and a dire
warning of the manner in
which contemporary global
capitalism is grinding us all
down and destroying our hu-
manity. It is the destruction of
our humanity that Riley han-
dles in such a superb manner.
When the film ended I re-
mained seated as I processed
what I had just seen. But I
also wanted to overhear oth-
er viewers and get a sense of
their comments.
Many were as excited and
moved as me.
But there were a few people
that exited the theatre who
were clearly baffled by the
film. I suspect that they were
not expecting a film that was
anything but linear. It did not
just focus on race; it did not
just focus on class; it did not
focus only on gender.
It was truly multi-dimen-
sional and was at the same
time pushing the audience
out of their comfort zones so
that they were not just view-
ing a film; they were forced to
view the USA, only through
very different glasses.
If you have not seen the film,
you must put the time aside to
do it. My concern with films
as great as this one is that they
will disappear before they
have fully gained traction.
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