One mango at a time

In 1996, a relatively peaceful time in Haiti, I traveled there with Global Exchange and was struck—despite the deforestation, despite the outbreaks of violence—by what a vibrant, welcoming, and even beautiful country it was. I wrote an article about the trip called Haiti as a Tourist Destination.

About a year later, I came upon a book of photos from Haiti that made me wonder—beginning with the seeming village idiot pictured on the cover—whether the photographer had been to the same place. “Steeped in Voodoo and brutalised by its rulers,” the book’s description read, “it is a country where human life is cheap and animals hardly worth life.”

Along with a surprising amount of help and compassion after the earthquake in Haiti, there has been a strong undercurrent of contempt and condescension. Once the compassion has faded, I’m afraid the contempt will continue. Long-term assistance and development requires a recognition that Haiti is worth developing.

For that reason I was pleased to see an op-ed in the New York Times called Building Haiti’s Economy, One Mango at a Time. Here’s an excerpt:

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and yet it need not be so, because unexploited economic opportunities abound there. Some of the best mangoes in the world grow in Haiti — though too many of them rot, offshore from the world’s largest market, for want of adequate roads and well-governed ports. Excellent coffee is grown in the Haitian mountains, but much of it is sold informally across the border to coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, who reap most of the profits.

Haiti also has many qualities attractive to tourists: a warm climate; magnificent white-sand beaches and turquoise water; Tortuga, the famous pirate island off the northern coast; and the Citadel, a mountain fortress erected after Haiti’s independence in the early 19th century to fend off colonial powers, now a World Heritage site. Still, it is one of the least visited places in the Caribbean.

How Air America lost teen spirit

One of my favorite maxims on marketing comes from advertising legend David Ogilvy: “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.”

The people who made Air America what it started out to be—Marc Maron, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Jim Earl, Brendan McDonald, Mike Malloy, Rachel Maddow—understood that.

The suits at the top, notably CEO Danny Goldberg, did not.

In 2003, Goldberg published a book called How the Left Lost Teen Spirit. Two years later, while the paperback edition was fresh off the presses, he pulled the plug on Morning Sedition, which more than anything else on Air America had the intelligence, sharpness, and hilarity to grab young listeners (as well as the not so young).

It’s hard to recall just how exciting it was to discover Air America when it was first on the air—and especially Morning Sedition. Jenn and I turned it on when we were barely conscious, and even before our first cup of coffee we were laughing at Morning Remembrance, Future Marc, the Pitch of the Week, and all the other inspired insanity.

Danny Goldberg put an end to all that. In a guest post at the Down with Tyranny blog, he defends himself at length—but scroll down to see what Brendan McDonald and Jim Earl have to say. I’ll let Jim Earl have the last word:

Aside from applauding everything Brendan’s already written, I’d like to add these choice bits:

I wrote for Air America from the beginning, but ended up mostly performing and writing for Maron’s show—this, despite his atavistic predilection for pouring warm spittoon tailings into the break room coffee-maker every morning.

Aside from that, the most peculiar thing I ever witnessed at Air America, including the time Riley secretly married a breakfast roll in the basement, was how a liberal network whose concept was rooted in the goal that it not become a humorless copy of NPR, had now become a humorless copy of NPR. And that was Danny’s genius. No one could suck the happy out of a building faster than you could. And that’s what killed the best, most exciting shows at Air America: some guy who didn’t like or didn’t get jokes. You know—satire, parody, sarcasm. Things that can actually catch people’s attention in politics. Instead you opted to bore the crap out of radio audiences—much like you did to me half way through your blog. Radio audiences don’t like being bored, Danny. And if you hadn’t spent most of your job time recuperating at your Malibu beach house or bunkered in the corner office atop a pyramid of TaB, perhaps you would have discovered that.

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Most years around Christmas time, Jenn and I get out our secondhand VHS tape of the 1996 movie The Long Kiss Goodnight and curl up with some popcorn. It’s a terrific action movie with a strong (scarily strong) female lead played by Geena Davis, and an ice-cold but weirdly charming villain (Craig Bierko). And it’s a Christmas movie!

If you’re into 9/11 conspiracy theories, the plot overseen by US intelligence official Leland Perkins (Patrick Malahide) will give you something to mull over. The section of dialogue below, between Perkins and Charly Baltimore (Geena Davis) may help explain why you don’t see this movie on TV much.

PERKINS
Budget cuts, remember? Congress blinded us in Eastern Europe, Central America. Across the board, an intelligence blackout. We had to recruit any eyes and ears we could find, even if it meant going to former targets.

Pause. Suddenly Charly’s eyes go wide. She whispers:

CHARLY
Budget cuts… oh, God. Is that what this is about...? The foot soldiers, the tanker truck… Fuck me, you’re running a fundraiser!!

Comprehension, dawning. She looks up in disbelief.

CHARLY
You’ll get all the money you want at the next budget hearing, won’t you...? All you need is a major terrorist incident.

PERKINS
Interesting theory.

CHARLY
Theory, my ass. I think some terrorists were planning a strike. Bought supplies from Daedalus, that’s how you knew they were coming…
(eyes widening)
No way. Don’t tell me you’re gonna sit there and let them go through with it, just to get a budget increase.

Perkins shrugs philosophically.

PERKINS
It’s not without precedent. 1993, remember the World Trade Center bombing...? The CIA had advance knowledge, don’t think they didn’t. Worse, the diplomat who issued the terrorist’s visa was CIA, they facilitated the bombing. Purely to justify a budget increase. Of course, they’d no way of knowing the terrorists would botch the job.

CHARLY
That’s not gonna happen this time...?

PERKINS
No. This time, the terrorist event will come off precisely as planned. This time the terrorists can’t muck it up… because we’ve killed them and taken over.

Dennis Brutus 1924-2009

When I think of Dennis Brutus, I remember a photo I once saw of him standing in front of a portrait of Frederick Douglass. His graying mane and stoic expression gave him a certain resemblance to Douglass, which I’m sure he was well aware of. I met him several times when I was doing anti-apartheid work in the 1980s, and I was sorry to read of his death.

I once helped organize a fundraising event at Harvard where Brutus spoke about his efforts to have South Africa banned from the Olympics, and about his attempt to escape after his arrest in 1963. Finding himself with his guards on the streets of Johannesburg, he broke free and ran, thinking that they would never be reckless enough to shoot him on a crowded street.

He was wrong. A bullet passed through his body, and before long he was serving an 18-month sentence on Robben Island.

I was carrying a copy of his book A Simple Lust, and before the event I mentioned to him that I liked his poem “The companionship of bluegum trees.”

To my surprise, he stopped what he was doing, sat down, looked up the poem, and read it to me: the only time that I have been privileged enough to be an audience of one for a poet.

The companionship of bluegum trees
their sheen and spangle against the midday
winter sun
and the companionable nudge of my heart
knocking against my mind and memory
with evocation of my student hazy days
condemns me once again
labels me poet dreamer troubadour
unreal unworldly muddle-headed fool
while the trees nod and swagger
and the level sunlight flows.

Traitor with Don Cheadle

As fans of Don Cheadle, Jenn and I made a point of going to see Traitor on its opening weekend last year. In it, Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a former Special Forces soldier working under “deep cover” with a group of Islamic terrorists who operate in Yemen, France, and elsewhere. He reports entirely off the books to a US government played by a (surprisingly bulky) Jeff Daniels. An FBI agent played by Guy Pearce, believing Horn is a genuine terrorist, is tracking him closely.

Is Horn in fact a US government spy? Or have his traumatic life experiences and his long exposure to radical Muslims turned him into a double agent? It’s an exciting story, intelligently written, well acted, and well directed. Yet it didn’t do particularly well at the box office ($7 million on its opening weekend).

A few days ago we watched it again on DVD, and were caught up once again in the drama. Even when you know the secrets, it’s a compelling movie.

So what was the problem? Are moviegoers not interested in seeing black leading men who are not Will Smith or Denzel Washington? (They saw Hotel Rwanda, after all.) Was this film too hard for people to follow? (It wasn’t as difficult as, say, Syriana.) Or did people find its portrayal of terrorists too sympathetic? The terrorists, particularly Horn’s friend Omar, are presented as dangerous fanatics but nonetheless human beings. Yet I don’t think most people would know this unless they actually saw the film.