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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1991-09-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25,1991. PAGE 5. It's disgusting how easily people get offended I give up. I figured that after 48 years I had maybe figured out a thing or two about life and how it works, but I was wrong. Once again Life has blown right by me like a Nolan Ryan forkball, and I've been left swinging like a batwing door. Life's latest puzzlement: the Benetton Broughaha. Benetton, for those of you who don't follow fashion, is an Italian clothing company, as famous for its oddball advertising campaigns as it is for the apparel it merchandises. They've sponsored billboards showing a priest kissing a nun. They've featured full page magazine spreads in which a little white girl kisses a little black boy. But this time the ad lads at Benettons have gone too far — for the British anyway. The inhabitants of Blighty awoke one morning recently to find their country speckled with Benetton billboards of the most obscene and offensive nature. Radio and television station switchboards were inundated with Xenophobia is on the rise BY RAYMOND CANON The dictionary defines xenophobia as having a dislike of strangers or foreigners; it is one of those insidious things that nobody professes to practicing even while they are alleged evil effects that some ethnic group are having on our society. I have often commented that English must hold some record for the number of derogatory words which it contains about foreigners although I must confess that some of them seem to be going out of use faster than we create new ones. As we are a nation of minorities, it is perhaps more difficult here than elsewhere to carry out blatant xenophobia; it is likely, therefore, to take on a more subtle form. In a country that is populated mainly of one race, the xenophobia is likely to be more obvious. That is certainly the case in Japan where the inhabitants have long had a profound distrust of anything foreign. Perhaps the most overt sign of this is the attitude which the Japanese have taken toward the Koreans who have, for one reason or another, settled in Japan to live and to work. Regardless of the job that they were doing, they were considered and treated very much as second-class citizens. It is only recently, as Korea, or at least the southern part of it, has become a power in its own right, that the Japanese have been forced to come to grips with this xenophobia. However, the Japanese can be on the receiving end of it as well. This is very obvious south of the border where the Americans have a schizophrenic attitude toward them. At the same time as government agencies are trying to persuade foreign companies to set up shop in the U.S., many Americans are decidedly suspicious of the Japanese and their attitude toward foreign assets i.e. U.S. ones. There was great resentment when it was discovered that the same Japanese held a controlling interest in Rockefeller Centre, a landmark in New York calls from outraged citizens. Letters that began "I was shocked and appalled ..." fell in blizzard-like drifts on rounded shoulders of newspaper editors. The British Advertising Standards Authority fielded more than 800 calls demanding the billboards be covered over instantly. Cause of the abomination? Photos of mutilated corpses, perhaps? Closeups of tortured hamsters? Ethiopian refugees? Mike Wallace without makeup? No. Benetton incensed the British public by showing a newborn child, complete with umbilical cord, on its billboards. "It has caused a very large amount of distress to the public," according to the director general of the Advertising Standards Authority. In the name of sanity -- why? We accept Robocop, Terminator and Friday the Thirteenth movies. We don't blink at newsreels that show Iraqi conscripts being ionized by Stealth bombers. We gobble up Westerns, the Superbowl and Fight Night Live from Las Vegas ... But we can't handle the sight of a newborn baby? We had another example of this strange new sensitivity last month when the magazine Vanity Fair hit the stands. There on the front cover was a shot of a Hollywood starlet from the waist up. She was facing to City. A move into the movie industry, in the form of the purchase of Universal Studies, brought forth similar resentment. If a Canadian corporation had carried out the same purchases and they had been uncontested, there would have been scarcely a ripple. Yet there is roughly the same amount of investment from our country as there is from Japan. It should not come as any surprise to learn that most of the bills currently before Congress are aimed more at the Japanese than at any other country. This is not to say that other countries would not be hurt. At the present time there is a bill that would limit the number of foreigners in the entertainment and sports industries that come into the United States each year to some ridiculous figure like 25,000. They would also have only 90 days in which to make an application. Fortunately this bill has a good chance of not being passed but the very fact that it exists shows the mood in the U.S. The poor Palestinians, who never seem to please anybody, are also coming in for their share of xenophobia. Because of the fact that they are about the best educated of any of the Arab people, they have consistently been able to find employment throughout the Principal thanks community THE EDITOR, I am writing on behalf of the students and staff of Brussels Public School to thank the Brussels community in general, and the many individuals whose attendance and assistance made last Thursday's Open House Barbecue a successful evening. While the primary objective was to invite the community to see the various improvements to the school facilities, records indicate that about 350 people were served and a profit of $220.20 was realized for the maintenance of the left, turning with a coy smile towards the camera. And she was naked. Nothing unusual in that. Every week the newsstands are blanketed with magazines that feature naked cover girls in poses that range from corny cheesecake to hard core pom. But there was something daringly, utterly different about the Vanity Fair cover. The starlet was the actress Demi Moore. And she was defiantly, triumphantly pregnant. I can’t recall such pandemonium over a periodical since Time Magazine asked IS GOD DEAD? in big bold letters on its cover about 20 years back. Johnny Carson cracked jokes about the pregnant cover girl. Radio and TV talk shows debated whether or not the editors of Vanity Fair had the 'right' to publish such a shot. Again — what's the big deal? How can a simple and tasteful shot of a woman with child upset folks as jaded as we are? Two of the most beautiful things I know in this world are newborn babes and barrel- bellied mothers-to-be. Makes you wonder what would happen if Joseph and Mary tried to book a room in the Jerusalem Inn nowadays. They'd probably give them a room alright. As long as Mary didn't mind being X- rated. Middle East. One such country where their services were most sought after was Kuwait. Unfortunately the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which claims to speak for all of them, backed the wrong side in the recent war with Iraq. This has led to a district case of Xenophobia in post-war Kuwait where all Palestinians tend to be treated with a great deal of suspicion. The same holds true for Saudia Arabia and, since these two countries made generous donations to the P.L.O., all this has now been cut off. How long this will take to dissipate is a good question. Even I am on the receiving end of some of this xenophobia now and again. I was sitting in a bus one day with my son and, as we have done since he was old enough to speak, we were talking French to each other. This was obviously too much for some people near-by and, in a voice that was obviously loud enough for others to hear, one said, "I do wish that these foreigners would either learn to speak our language or go back where they came from." This was too much for me. "Madame," I replied, "I am speaking one of our languages. It is too much to expect that you are able to do the same." There was deathly silence on the part of all concerned. instruments in the music program. We also wish to thank the Blyth Festival for its generous donation of door prizes in the form of tickets to the children's series. The recipients were Emma Richards, Rhonda Hoegy, Chris Walker and Andrew Garland. Thank you again, for your continued interest and support for the students of Brussels Public. David E. Kemp Principal Brussels Public School Canada- loving it but leaving it By Keith Roulston I suppose it isn't surprising given the mood of the country these days, that a lot of people are deciding to pack up and leave. Pat Marsden, well-known television and radio sports broadcaster, announced the other day he's heading to Florida, permanently, to provide a newscast on Florida television stations for Canadian snowbirds in the south. "I'm tired of getting up every morning and hearing and reading how bad everything is in this country," Mr. Marsden said. "I'm an upbeat guy and I'm getting out." Last week Peter Gzowski on CBC Morningside interviewed a professor from the University of Waterloo and his wife who are leaving Canada to settle in New Zealand where he has been offered the kind of teaching position your just can't get in North America anymore. Asked if he wasn't worried about losing his Canadian identity, the professor said he felt it would be easier to stay Canadian in New Zealand than it is in Canada with it's ever-increasing American influence. In introducing the couple, Mr. Gzowski said he knew of more and more Canadians who were leaving: that his daughter had attended two parties in one week for emigrating friends. Everybody, it seems, is unhappy about the way the country is going these days. Perhaps the professor and his wife and Mr. Marsden neatly symbolize the different forms of discontent and the different ways to escape it. For those with money, the problem is that there are too many Canadian taxes, too much government interference and just loo many hindrances to making even more money. For those with money the ideal is the U.S. and it is the haven they seek when they're fed up with Canada. For many others, it is the American influence that is the problem. They feel that Canada could be run by a different set of rules, a set of rules where the little guys matter in more than just the rhetoric about how anybody can grow up to be president (or prime minister). For them the haven is to go to a county that's like Canada, but is far enough away from the pervasive U.S. propaganda machine to allow a country to live by its own rules. I show my own prejudices when I side with the couple leaving for New Zealand, in fact almost envy them. The Canada I was once so proud of (I was a nationalist from about age seven) seems to be a thing of the past. We once dreamed of making a better society but now we say that's not the way the world works. Might is right now. We're in a culture where the only way to get what you want is to be more powerful. That power can be in being a bigger business organization or in a big union that can shut down an entire country. We think that anybody's entitled to all the wealth and all the power he can grab. It's a dog-eat-dog world. While we talk a good game of "internationalism" and "globalization" we seem to have retreated into a small-minded world that looks only inward at ourselves: “I don't give a damn about the poor and homeless as long as I don't have to pay too much for my VCR". During the '80's, a time of unprecedented wealth in North America, the gap between the rich and the poor increased in both Canada and the United Stales but still the rich complained about having to pay to much of their income in taxes. We've become a selfish, mean-spirited country and it's hard to blame the people who want to flee to a country that is more concerned with caring than bank balances.