The Apprentice and the President

As I was begrudgingly watching the last ten minutes of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’, I was pleasantly surprised by a breaking news report “ … The President will appear briefly to make a statement …” I immediately wondered whether the President needed some air time, you know, to reassure the American people that he was not born in Kenya. After all, Trump’s recent irritating “birther” nonsense had prompted the White house to release Obama’s birth certificate. Then the newscaster continued with “… NBC has confirmed that Osama bin Laden is dead … It is the end of an era …” What! How did that happen? The timing could not have been better for the “Kenyan” President’s major announcement. For me, it was a much better ending of a ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ episode than the one I had anticipated earlier in the evening. The Donald has become the butt of even more jokes - making the whole nonsense even more entertaining.

World Cup and Nostalgia

I grew up loving soccer. Before I knew who Pele was, I knew Pele was a legendary "king of football". Soccer was the favorite national pastime. Rich-poor, tall-short, fat-thin, kids played it everywhere. We yelled, cried, laughed at the whims of our teams' misses and hits. We were under the spell of soccer magic. Watching a game was playing one. Being a soccer fan was being a soccer player. World Cup was a month long fiesta.

When I moved to the U.S., I wondered what happened to the magic of soccer. Nobody, except the very new immigrants, cared for it. To my greatest disappointment, Americans did not share that worldwide passion and, and, in fact, insisted on not calling it "football". So every World Cup series, nostalgia suffocated me. I turned to Univision to watch the Copa Mundial de FIFA and to be delighted by the announcer's passionate shriek of "gooooooooal". Like in the past, I yelled-cried-laughed mostly alone. But I knew I was sharing the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat with millions around the world. Every World Cup presented an opportunity to revisit my childhood memories of Paolo Rossi's team that had Italy celebrate for weeks, Michel Platini's moves that had my friends emulate them, and Diego Maradona's "Hand of God goal" that had us talking for days...

This World Cup, I was resigned to do the same. I was excited that FIFA selected for the first time an African nation as its host. I expected the minimum coverage from the American media as usual. After all, I have come to accept that soccer is not an American pastime. To my delight, I found out I was slightly off. This year, I was pleasantly surprised at the level of American media coverage. I even felt some American soccer romance budding. Americans are starting to embrace the real "football". I can now be nostalgic in English. Welcome to the World Cup fiesta, America!

Of Pushkin, Dumas and Illusion

This past summer, I met my maternal granduncle L for the very first time. He had come to attend my brother's wedding from Italy, where he has lived almost all his life. He is a fairly young, around forty-something year old, professor of history at a major university. He had married his high school sweetheart, an Italian physician, had a son and then gotten a divorce. Most of the older ladies, smitten by his good looks, outgoing personality, and charming wit, were ready to play matchmakers and find him his soul mate. He was flattered and amused by the attention. What I found most captivating was the cultural difference or, should I say, cultural illusion. A great storyteller that he is, he shared with us many anecdotes, one of them being this.

One day in the early 1990's, he goes to a conference where a colleague, who specializes in African history, is presenting his research findings on Alexander Pushkin's East African ancestry and his future plans for the project. The presenter's position is that Pushkin’s great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was originally from a border town between Ethiopia and Eritrea and that further research studies need to be conducted. A third colleague and L start to question whether Pushkin should even be a topic in African history. He is Russian and his contributions are to Russian literature. One who is specializing in African history should be focusing on Africa. Why create the illusion of a history? There are many topics within the African continent that need to be explored...The Pushkin expert overhears their remarks, fumes over their discouraging comments and protests to deaf ears...

Upon hearing this, I vehemently disagreed and defended the Pushkin expert. Yes, Yes, Pushkin is Russian but his East African ancestry should be examined and should be of interest to African history experts. In the U.S., Pushkin would have been considered black. Why shouldn't the East Africans claim him as part of their history? In my passionate argument, I even tried to lecture on how history should be studied forgetting briefly that I am talking to a historian. My argument was only met by a stunned look, a look that said ‘cosa stai parlando?’ There was an obvious difference in paradigm.

Long after the conversation ended, I wondered whether my view would have been the same had I not been conditioned by the American view of race and politics. One of the issues that has disappointed, baffled and confronted me in the land of the free is how the free was, dare I say, mentally imprisoned by race. Over the last two decades or so, it has greatly improved. I only imagine it to improve in the future. But still... I sometimes resent the issue and the conditioning.

A recent controversy surrounding a new movie about Alexandre Dumas (père), L’ Autre Dumas, reminded me of L’s Pushkin story. The controversy centered around the fact that a black actor not having the role of Dumas, a person of color, but instead Gérard Depardieu being cast for it. The general American view is probably an emphatic No. It does not matter that Dumas is three-quarter French; he should be portrayed by a black actor and not by Depardieu with a tanned face and curly hair. I wonder what the general French view is.

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten-thousand truths.” Alexander Pushkin

I have yet to see the movie and I am already disappointed… not because Depardieu is playing Dumas but rather at the annoying storyline, i.e. Dumas allegedly had a shy collaborator, Auguste Maquet, who deserves much of the credit for the plots and drafts of Dumas’ most famous works. If this is not annoying to a Dumas fan, I do not know what is. I would have liked the illusion that exalted me to remain intact. Oh… how fascinated I was when I first read Dumas’ literary works as a child… and …when I found out his paternal ancestry as a new immigrant... knowing little then how many times I would have to examine and reexamine my illusions.

Photo 1: Two of Arts - 2000 Visual Mashups by qthomasbower

Photo 2: Alexander Pushkin in Negro History (Jet Magazine, May 28, 1953) by vieilles annonces

Photo 3: Alexandre Dumas in Negro History (Jet Magazine, July 24, 1952) by vieilles annonces

Healthcare Around the World

I watched a rerun of an interesting Frontline report by T.R Reid entitled ‘Sick Around the World’ in which he compared the health care systems of five capitalist democracies, i.e United Kingdom (U.K), Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland. According to an excerpt from his upcoming book on international health care ‘We’re Number 37!’, there are four basic health care systems: the Beveridge model, the Bismarck model, the National Health Insurance [NHI] model, and the Out-of-Pocket model. He chose the U.K as an example of the Beveridge model, Taiwan as an example of the Canadian-style NHI model, Germany, Japan and Switzerland as examples of the Bismarck model. He focused on three Bismarck countries on the theory that the U.S would learn more from these private-sector systems than the British-style National Health Service. Each example offered a system that delivered health care for everyone - but with remarkable differences and concerns.

Here is the full report:



The title of T.R Reid's newest book 'We're Number 37!', which is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in May 2009, refers to the U.S's ranking in the World Health Organization 2000 World Health Report. Although some have criticized the WHO 2000 report, most agree with the 2007 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that the U.S spends more of its percentage of gross domestic production on health care than other nations including the U.K, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. Defenders of America's health sector claim that it delivers superior health outcomes, such as longer cancer survival rates. Detractors claim that other nations' systems deliver equal or better health outcomes such as longer life expectancy and better infant mortality rates. The Frontline report shows that nearly every system faces problems of rising cost and lack of access to care. Still, as the U.S looks to reform its health care system, there are lessons that it can learn from these countries. I found the following excerpt particularly interesting:

“These four models should be fairly easy for Americans to understand because we have elements of all of them in our fragmented national health care apparatus.

When it comes to treating veterans, we're Britain or Cuba [the Beveridge model].

For Americans over the age of 65 on Medicare, we're Canada [the NHI model].

For working Americans who get insurance on the job, we're Germany [the Bismarck model].

For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India [the Out-of-Pocket model], with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you're sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.

The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people...”

February: Black History Month

If you are an immigrant to the States, you may be surprised to find out that the month of February is also known as Black History Month. When I first heard about it, I wondered about its relevance. Isn’t February the shortest month? Isn’t Black history considered American history? It was then that I discovered that one of my favorite writers, Alexandre Dumas (père) was one-fourth Haitian and if he were an American, he would be black. Wow!

Ever since, I stopped wondering about its relevance. You live, you learn. This year, in order to celebrate Black History Month, Dr. Isis posted a fabulous link, which I enjoyed reading.

*Picture: Alexandre Dumas (père) by Nadar (Wikipedia)

A New Day!

What a day it was! The day before yesterday... The day of the inauguration of Barack H. Obama ... It was a new day. It was a new beginning. It was a gift filled with faith, hope and affirmation.

No matter how hard I tried to ignore the day, it confronted and overwhelmed me. What a day of faith it was for the African slave up in heaven to see the son of an African become the leader of the free world! What a day of hope it was for poor forgotten children around the world to see a dark-skinned man from humble beginnings rise to the top! What a day of affirmation it was for Americans -past, present and future- who believed in the greatness of their country!

If only I could put the spirit of the day in a perfume bottle to spray a little each new day...