Saturday, August 01, 2009

Um ... what?


Submitted in total bafflement, courtesy of "Progressive" blogger Diva Rachel:

Corazon Aquino was the first female president of the Philippines and was Asia's first female president...

I am ashamed to admit I never even heard of her until to day. Not surprising that any great diva's achievements would be almost ignored by the main stream WASP media.

If I'm sometimes embarrassed to call myself a "progressive," does that make me a bad person?

22 comments:

dupmar said...

She's one of yours, Ti-Guy, judging by the content of other articles, some in French, presumably a young woman of Haitian or similar origin educated in French language institutions in Ottawa. She does make reference to articles in Montreal French language media.

You may see it differently, I don't see anything wrong with the content in her pieces. On Aquino, she admits she hadn't heard of her previously, had grown up and become politically aware after Aquino's role had been eclipsed.

Curiously, she has a piece on honour killings, although it shouldn't be deemed an anti-Muslim tirade. She defends Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, has a piece defending Jason Kenney on his handling of immigration/ refugee issues: “I applaud MP Jason Kenney for addressing the upcoming onslaught of illegal residents in an ethical way. Yeah, he's a Conservative. Donnez à César ce qui est à César! »

So are you going to disown her. You have to recognize there are a diversity of views, in the Liberal camp, occasionally even in the Conservative camp.

Lindsay Stewart said...

A la teh Google...

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,120,000 for Corazon Aquine.

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,960,000 for Stephen Harper.

Results 1 - 10 of about 195,000 for twatwaffle.

Cory Aquino served as Philippines President from 1986 to 1992. She was such an obscure figure that Time magazine named her Woman of the Year in 1986. She was awarded the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding in 1996, an award previously given to other such overlooked persons as Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela. Time Magazine again barely noticed her in 1999 when it named her among the 20 Most Influential Asians of the 20th Century.

Oh sure, she was tossed a few other measly awards and accolades, recognized the world over for her ground breaking contributions to her country, to Asia and to the world but still. Being named as one of 65 Great Asian Heroes along with other historical footnotes like Mahatma Gandhi is practically an insult. Its like nobody ever noticed her existence.

Oh look potatoes! Shiny...

CC said...

dupmar:

It's not her ignorance of Aquino that's so hideous -- it's her uneducated, childish snark of, "Not surprising that any great diva's achievements would be almost ignored by the main stream WASP media."

The initial ignorance is (sort of) forgivable -- the subsequent infantile and totally unjustified potshot at the "main stream WASP media" is not.

dupmar said...

Comments noted. There are a good number of amateurs with political blogs making foolish statements that are not well grounded, researched or thought out. The blogging tories have more than their fair share, and you will occasionally fall upon some in other political camps.

Comment to Ti-Guy. The Conservative Party has not been taken over by Amway salesmen, but by door-to-door salesmen hawking a different product.

Unknown said...

She's an idiot. Look at some of her other posts: "Is Norman Spector a partisan blogger???" and "Those damn gypsies are all thieves!"

dupmar said...

I think Ti-Guy will have to pay her blog a visit to set her straight on what Liberals stand for and advocate and point out the evils of blogging tory advocacy.

As I said, political curiosities may be found in every camp.

CC said...

In terms of total and horrific cluelessness, I am weirdly reminded of this.

I'm sure you can see why.

Ti-Guy said...

Une bécasse.

KEvron said...

clearly, ti-guy has left a splinter up dupmar's ass.

KEvron

KEvron said...

do we dare bring rachel up to speed on diva imelda?

KEvron

Ti-Guy said...

clearly, ti-guy has left a splinter up dupmar's ass.

The implications of this are unseemly...

I think Dupmar's suffering from major cognitive dissonance; he wants to be a Conservative (never got over Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act, so he hates Liberals) but can't quite come to grips with how bull-goose loony they all are.

wv: faquen. Yeah well, same to you, Blogger!

deBeauxOs said...

Sadly, that snipe at the MSM is not untypical of Diva Rachel's M.O. Remember her fawning tribute to Sheriff Arpeio? (I tried to find a link, but it seems to have been disappeared.)

As far as the MSM goes, out of sight, out of mind. That happens to white old men too; until recently, when a piece about Jimmy Carter's views on christian doctrine was published, most US citizens probably thought he was dead already.

Diva Rachel's attempt to cover her ignorance and inability to research properly with snide remarks is lame.

Renee said...

Just another victim of the manocentric maleocracy.

Ti-Guy said...

That's phallocracy.

Frank Frink said...

Une bécasse.

KEvron - yeah, that one is a mere splinter when Ti-Guy could have employed a 2 x 4.

wv = pootoo

KEvron said...

ff, i was refering to dupmar's fixation on ti-guy; mentioned by name in each comment. someone's haboring a nasty grudge. i enjoy a good public spectacle.

KEvron

KEvron said...

who's gonna break the news about francisco franco?

KEvron

Ti-Guy said...

someone's haboring a nasty grudge. i enjoy a good public spectacle.

Nah, Dupmar's just ribbing me. We both pretty much agree that "Conservatives" are bizarre.

dupmar said...

Not simply the War Measures Act, Ti-Guy, I don't hold a grudge for that long. A difference in constitutional perspectives, not necessarily on the role of the state, but on division of powers between jusrisdictions. We almost had our differences with Quebec worked out in 1990, and then this fell apart, unfortunately, with some connivance from key Liberal figures.

So what have we had in the past 20 years, a second referendum, constant bickering with the PQ/Bloc, a stalemate because they don't have enough support to go over the top, but aren't disappearing anytime soon either.

The Quebec media point out the obvious to the PQ, they don't and can't find sufficient support to rally a majority behind sovereignty, but a solid majority would rally behind a constitutional reform perspective, greater autonomy for Quebec, within Canada.

Now maybe it will all break apart, but I believe an effort should be made to seek out whatever compromise is possible and move forward. There was a period in Canada's governance when the RCMP did not rifle through PQ's offices to steal membership lists and there weren't police moles in their leading bodies, when even Levesque was on board with the perspective of constitutional reform and Joe Clark would drop by Bernard Landry's office for a friendly chat.
Not because I hold a grudge against the Liberals, but rather simply because they were not prepared to seek out such a solution.

Ti-Guy said...

Yeah, yeah, it's the Liberals fault. Everyone found something in the Charlottetown agreement to oppose. I tend to agree with what's written in Wikpedia about it:

As the campaign progressed, the accord steadily became less and less popular. This is often credited to much of the electorate finding at least some part of the lengthy accord with which they disagreed. It is also closely connected to the extreme unpopularity of Brian Mulroney in 1992, and to the nation's general antipathy towards the constitutional debates.

dupmar said...

I'm not referring to Charlottetown, Ti-Guy, but rather to Meech. The die was already cast with the failure of Meech, and Bouchard's defection to the sovereignist camp taking the majority of Quebec Progressive Conservative MPs and a good portion of the base with him.
You can't blame the failure of Meech on Reform, Trudeau, Carstairs, Clyde Wells were some of the major players in the Liberal camp pushing for its demise. History would have played out much differently if Meech had gone through.

In a Dec 7 2004 restrospective on Bouchard and Meech in the Montreal Gazette, Josee Legault writes:

“As reported at the time in the Globe and Mail and brought up this year in Pierre Duchesne’s third volume on Jacques Parizeau, there was a period when Bouchard thought of creating a third party. From the time Meech faltered in the late 1980s to the early 1990s - even as Bouchard would build the Bloc Quebecois more as a nationalist coalition than a sovereignist party - he saw Parizeau as too hard- line and thought Robert Bourassa incapable of satisfying his soft nationalists who were in disarray.”

“Bouchard believed that a more middle-ground, provincial party could unite soft Liberal and PQ nationalists. As he joined the Belanger-Campeau commission - tellingly not as a sovereignist but as "nonaligned" - he approached Claude Beland, then president of Desjardins, to create this new party.”

“But post-Meech Lake Accord politics became rapidly polarized and the nationalist Bouchard became stuck in the sovereignist camp as this option was now the only alternative to the status quo and was supported by more than 60 percent of Quebecers.”

“Although he put on his Captain Sovereignty costume throughout the referendum campaign in 1995, he spent the previous months trying to water down and slow Parizeau’s vision and strategy. When he succeeded Parizeau, Bouchard was in a position to impose his own watering down as leader and forego any promotion or action on sovereignty.”

“The fact is that Bouchard always was a traditional nationalist, who would gladly strike a more autonomist deal within Canada. Bouchard was and remains a Meech kind of a guy. Hence the war that’s placed him against Parizeau’s separatist vision for years.”

“In a 2002 documentary on the failure of Meech, Bouchard expressed the kind of heartfelt nostalgia no separatist would ever feel : ‘If Meech had passed, it would have been a great moment in the history of Canada and Brian Mulroney’s name would have been associated with one of Canada’s greatest successes’."

Unknown said...

I copied and pasted this partial comment from Lindsay Stewart into Diva Rachel's blog and attempted to post it as a comment. Needless to say it did not show up:

"Cory Aquino served as Philippines President from 1986 to 1992. She was such an obscure figure that Time magazine named her Woman of the Year in 1986. She was awarded the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding in 1996, an award previously given to other such overlooked persons as Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela. Time Magazine again barely noticed her in 1999 when it named her among the 20 Most Influential Asians of the 20th Century. "