History's greatest monster
So I'm a hundred years late to this in online time, but since David Roth wrote an interesting bit about it I'm going to say that the most interesting thing about former NBA bench guy Paul Shirley's callous, ill informed piece on Haiti isn't how callous and ill informed it is, but how close it is to Serious, Reasoned discourse. The real problem seems to be that Shirley asked Haitians to use condoms once in a while rather than writing in dull bureaucratese about the need for greater investment in family planning services by the international community, that he suggested they should start acting like human beings rather than droning on about building the institutions of civil society to adhere more closely to modern democratic norms, etc. Which isn't to say that it wasn't an incredibly nasty piece of writing, just that it was no more so than much of what you read on respectable Op-Ed pages. The real lesson here, as usual in these controversies, is that if you want to advocate appalling things you should do so while using a lot of code words and jargon rather than stating what you think in plain English.
Shirley shouldn't feel bad about not donating to Haiti anyway, as Creed, Godsmack, Rage Against the Machine, New Kids on the Block and Eve have apparently come together to aid Haiti with the greatest united front of douchebaggery seen since Malcolm McLaren joined the cast of Big Brother. Clearly they have things in hand.
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Matt Taibbi rules!
Two things this reminds me of:
1. Having this exact conversation about New Orleans/Katrina with several people. My parents live just outside of New Orleans, so I got plenty of stories from friends and family that never made the national news. In many cases, it was much worse than portrayed in the news, and the effects certainly went on for much longer than the donations.
2. Having the discussion about large corps using cheap labor in developing nations with someone at work. She claimed I "just didn't understand the poverty" or how the large corps exploited the people. I told her that both of those things may well be true, but that does not make those people savages that must be saved from themselves.
Developing nations need to have development in order to qualify for the description. Companies that open factories or offices that employ people in Haiti will bring the country out of the economic hole it is in, not donations of cash. Many companies that had offices in New Orleans deemed the city "too risky" after the cleanup and rebuilding, so they never went back. My family know of many that were forced to abandon perfectly good homes because they had to relocate for a job and could not sell their home, so they just abandoned it.
It is close to reasoned discourse, but I am not really sure anyone is reasonable in those situations.