The amazing thing about the United Nations, it’s always seemed to The Scrapbook, is how corrupt every tiny corner of it is. It makes mischief around the world in a thousand small ways that receive almost no attention. A case in point: The Scrapbook’s Botswana correspondent sends a clipping from the Ngami Times bearing the headline “Journalists urged to report environmental issues.” It reads in part,
Speaking at the start of a media training workshop on environment, the UN Resident Coordinator Khin Sandi Lwin [of the U.N. Development Program] said issues such as gender violence and HIV/AIDS are given more priority than environmental issues. She said it was important that the environment should also be reported on, as it is the basis of people’s livelihoods. Sandi Lwin said . . . the climate was on the verge of collapse as evidenced by harsh conditions worldwide which are brought about by climatic change. She said despite this, locally there is little coverage on the issues, adding, “and the time to act is now.” It was revealed at the workshop that major environmental issues in Botswana were pressure on water resources, degradation of rangeland, depletion of fire wood resources, overexploitation of veldt products, depletion of wildlife, and air and water pollution.
It’s a good question why the U.N. is in the business of “media training” to begin with. But that was not the main concern of our correspondent, who writes:
It’s just so smarmy the way the U.N. went at it. Botswana has one of the most pristine environments in the world. There are no environmental “problems” to deal with. Everything has been regulated before problems had a chance to develop. Fishing is controlled, hunting is fiercely regulated, water is clean and relatively plentiful for living in a desert, wildlife is healthy (except for rhino but they are, unfortunately, not flourishing anywhere), there is no industry in Botswana save for a few diamond and copper mines, the environment is as pure as you’re likely to find anywhere on earth. Even tourism is low volume (low impact), high income. Scientists from all over the world travel to the Okavango Delta in Botswana to see a water system that is pure and untouched. There are no problems to fix there. . . . On the other hand, HIV/AIDS is debilitating the country, 25 percent to 40 percent of the population has AIDS/HIV. The Botswana government spends a high percentage of its annual budget providing drugs and education for AIDS. . . . To say that journalists need to spend more time writing about the environment (and how it’s “on the verge of collapse”) is a cruel joke on the 1.8 million people living in Botswana and affected by HIV/AIDS and its consequences. Families are actually “collapsing” everywhere in Botswana. No one can afford to take in all the AIDS orphans whose parents have died. No one can afford to support all their dying relatives. No one can afford to pitch in for all their relatives’ funerals. . . . Marriage is too expensive with all the sick family members to support. . . . Little girls [are] getting raped by older “boyfriends.” The U.N. is so ignorant they think every African country has already shot and eaten all their wildlife, used their water sources as toilets, and sold all their trees. If the U.N. thinks that a hypothetical threat to lions, elephants, and let’s not forget “firewood” are greater than sex workers not using condoms and little girls getting raped by their friends and family members, they’re even stupider than I thought.
Indeed.
The Charlotte Democrats
First Lady Michelle Obama has been getting some flak—good-natured, to be sure, but flak nonetheless—for her statement of praise for Charlotte, North Carolina, after Charlotte was chosen to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Charlotte is a city marked by its Southern charm, warm hospitality and an “up by the bootstraps” mentality that has propelled the city forward as one of the fastest-growing in the South. Vibrant, diverse and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds. And of course, great barbecue.
The Scrapbook should begin by saying that, all things considered, we would be a little surprised to learn that Mrs. Obama even saw those two-and-a-half sentences before they were issued in her name: The deadly cadence, conscientious button-pushing, and general chamber-of-commerce banality strongly suggest that they were drafted, not by the first lady, but by some eager-beaver young speechwriter in the White House Communications Office.
The reason for the flak, however, is that tribute to Charlotte’s “great barbecue.” North Carolina likes to think of itself as the homeland of barbecue, and the Tar Heel State is full of experts who have since pointed out that, while Charlotte possesses many civic virtues, great barbecue is not among them. To which The Scrapbook can only respond: Point taken. The first lady (or her speechwriter) was clearly grasping for nice things to say about Charlotte—“Southern charm . . . vibrant . . . [full of] hardworking folks with big hearts”—which could just as easily be said about Mobile or Augusta or Nashville.
What The Scrapbook finds amusing about all this is not whether the Chicago-born-and-bred Michelle Obama knows anything about Southern barbecue, but the Democrats’ choice of Charlotte to kick off the campaign for Barack Obama’s second term. For while Charlotte is undeniably located in strategic North Carolina, it does not exactly ooze what people think of as “Southern charm.” It is, in fact, very much a postwar, corporate-headquarters, New South enclave, the 18th-largest city in the United States, famous not for its antebellum mansions or mossy gardens but its status (after New York) as the second most important banking center in the country. If the Democrats were looking for a venue in the South, but not especially of the South, they could hardly do better than Charlotte.
Which is probably smart politics, but will make for dull theater at convention time. For if there are any disputes on the credentials committee, they are likely to be resolved in a Waffle House Compromise. If there’s a movement to replace Joe Biden on the ticket, it will be headquartered at a Days Inn or, perhaps, a Courtyard Marriott. If delegates stage a walkout, or caucus angrily off the convention floor, they are likely to be munching on Krystal burgers or KFC and swilling Diet Dr. Pepper as they meet. And if things get really dramatic, The Scrapbook predicts with full confidence that party bosses will gather to hammer things out in smoke-free rooms (probably at the Airport Hilton).
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The Shameless Kenneth Cole
Fashion designer Kenneth Cole may think twice about promoting his products on Twitter after his memorable lapse in taste last week. He tweeted as follows: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online . . . -KC.” Followers of the account swiftly responded with outrage, prompting Cole to issue an apology to stave off a public relations nightmare. He was not “intending to make light of a serious situation,” he said, and he understood the “sensitivity of this historic moment.” The damning tweet was deleted.
The Scrapbook chuckled more than usual, as Cole is a member in good standing of the bien-pensant left, a son-in-law of Mario Cuomo, no less, who actually has a history of tasteless publicity stunts. But this time he got his comeuppance in the same forum, courtesy of a parody Twitter account, @KennethColePR, set up almost immediately after the designer’s gaffe. Here are some of @KennethColePR’s (fake) examples of how not to promote your product:
• People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores! • People of Haiti, fall into our store for earth-shattering savings! • Check out our new colab with @BP_America -- slick looks for spring! • People of Australia: Water up to your ankles? We’ve got your Kenneth Cole capris right here! • Wardrobe got you water-BORED? GITMO of our new spring collection.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Harvard and the Dictator
While the Obama administration is doing its best to separate itself from the Arab dictator who rules Egypt, graduates of the president’s alma mater are embracing the one who runs Syria. Harvard’s Arab Alumni Association is holding its 2011 Arab World Conference in Damascus next month, “under the patronage of Her Excellency, Mrs. Asma al-Assad, the first lady of Syria.”
The event will be held, naturally, at the Four Seasons Hotel—in the middle of one of the Syrian capital’s toniest neighborhoods, filled with the boutiques, restaurants, and nightclubs that have been titillating travel journalists the last few years—that is, since the ever-gauche George W. Bush isolated the regime as a junior associate in the Axis of Evil. Never mind Syria’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah and its alliance with Iran, the fashion-forward Syrian first lady has a public-figure Facebook page—to date 281 people like her page, which is perhaps the number of regime cronies and suck-ups who profit from the corruption and organized criminal activities of her husband and his illustrious ruling family.
It is unclear why Harvard grads have tied themselves publicly to the Assads, perhaps over the objections of some of the school’s Iraqi and Lebanese alumni. After all, the capital of Arab “resistance,” as the Assads and their fans like to refer to Damascus, was a way station for foreign fighters trying to get into Iraq to slaughter civilians and American soldiers. In 2005, Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon after a 15-year “presence” in the country that the Assad regime is now trying to renew. They can’t be doing it for the money because Syria is broke. In a Damascus suburb far from the Four Seasons, the government has relocated many refugees from the eastern part of the country, now undergoing a severe drought. And yet it’s curious that while the regime can’t see to farmers’ being able to feed themselves, it still had the wherewithal to build a secret nuclear facility in the desert—which the Israelis destroyed in the fall of 2007.
Perhaps the Harvard alums are just following the lead of the school’s most famous living law student, who over the last two years has sought to do diplomacy with the Syrians, and, as The Scrapbook reported last week, even sent a new ambassador. Still, we think this ghastly event is one engagement to miss.