Sunday, November 13, 2005
*************************************
WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
**********************************
The rich view the poor as lazy and the poor return the compliment by viewing the rich as exploiters, blood-suckers, and crooks motivated by greed.
*
Once in a while I see letters to the editor in our local paper berating the poor for their dependence on government handouts. Surviving on minimum wage in an environment where plumbers can make as much as $40.00 for four minutes’ work, and dentists $80.00 for eight minutes’ work (I speak from experience) is not easy. And speaking of government handouts: what about grants to corporations and academics, not to mention loopholes in the tax code designed to benefit the rich rather than the poor.
*
I have published thousands of commentaries and written many more letters to readers and friends, and none of them ends with the words “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek” (send us a little money). But every other day I receive a letter from an Armenian organization or church that ends with Panchoonie’s punch line. You may now guess who is accused of repeating himself.
*
Money will not save a nation, but accountability, solidarity, and vision may. Consider the fall of empires: it was not lack of money that did it, but too much of it.
*
When two think alike, the chances are either one or both are not thinking.
#
Monday, November 14, 2005
***********************************
SOMEBODY UP THERE DOESN’T LIKE US
************************************************
Sorry, but I can’t come up with any other explanation.
And if Somebody up there doesn’t like us
it may be because we are not a particularly likeable people.
If He liked us, why did He abandon us
at the mercy of ruthless tyrants, bloodthirsty savages,
and incompetent bunglers?
Six centuries under sultans
followed by seven decades under Bolsheviks.
Far from being the chosen people,
we may well qualify as the unchosen and the abandoned.
Naregatsi may have a point:
like the stars in the firmament
and the grains of sand in all the deserts
and on all the beaches of the world,
our sins must be numberless.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.
But no matter how hard I try,
I can’t come up with any other explanation.
If you can, I am all ears.
But please, no more sermonizing and speechifying.
No more bragging and lamenting.
I have had enough of both.
And be forewarned that
after decades of exposure
to recycled chauvinist crapola,
I come equipped with a highly sensitive shit detector.
#
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
*************************************
ON PREJUDICE
**************************
Faith does more than move mountains. It allows an idiot to think he knows better. I was such a thoroughly brainwashed Catholic as a boy that I was sure anyone who did not share my faith was a lesser man.
*
I was taught many things as a boy except to consider my fellow men as equals. Later, when I learned the meaning of the word prejudice, it did not even occur to me to connect it to myself and my attitude towards non-Catholics. And much later when I too was treated with prejudice in a non-Catholic environment, my first reaction was confusion, disorientation, malaise, and alienation. Again, the word prejudice never entered my mind.
*
We begin by thinking we are the center of the world and we end by thinking our nation, or civilization, or race, or religion is superior to all others.
*
What’s sinister about religions and ideologies is not what they teach but what they fail to teach.
*
During the last few days I read several commentaries about the French riots, one of which was titled “French Riots are part of global clash of civilizations,” and another “Blame French riots on poverty and lack of civil rights.” According to the first pundit, the only answer is “for the two civilizations to keep their distance”; according to the second, the elimination of racism and prejudice. The implication in the first pundit’s answer: prejudice is as old as mankind and no amount of education and legislation will eradicate it completely. The answer of the second pundit: maybe so but we must move in that direction if we want to avert World War III or a long series of catastrophic clashes.
Who is right? I don’t know, but I have the following suggestion to anyone who wants to make a contribution to world peace: Whenever you think your country or god is better than someone else’s, ask yourself: By whose criteria? If the answer is by your own or your educators, you can be sure of one thing: you may not be an idiot but you think like one.
#
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
***************************************
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
**********************************
In our environment flattery will get you everywhere. That too is part of our Ottoman heritage. If you doubt my word, try the following experiment. Write a letter to an editor praising his weekly, and another, under a different name, criticizing it, and see which gets into print pronto.
Once when I wrote a letter critical of an editorial, I received the following message from the editor: “We don’t as a rule print letters critical of our editorials.” Why not? No explanation was given. As Saroyan’s wife writes in her memoirs: “When I say la, you must understand lalabloo.”
If the flunkey of a boss, bishop, or benefactor wrote the editorial, criticizing it would amount to heresy, perhaps even sacrilege. As for violating a reader’s fundamental human right of free speech: imagine if you can raising the issue in the presence of a sultan.
And speaking of sultans: I will never forget the day I met one of our national benefactors – strike “met,” make it, saw him from a distance. Because as soon as his presence became known, he was immediately surrounded by a defensive phalanx of brown-nosers.
And speaking of brown-nosers: when asked to name his role models, this very same benefactor’s right-hand man who parades as an intellectual leader, named – you guessed – the national benefactor, who as far as I know has never said or written a single line worth publishing.
There has been a great deal of talk lately about Intelligent Design. As I look back at our history and what’s happening today in our Homeland and Diaspora, I can’t help asking: Where is the Design? Where is the Intelligence?
#[/B]