Yes and no. Brazil has long cherised a self-identity as a “racial democracy,” where race simply wasn’t an issue. Recently, Brazil has become more cognizant that there is indeed a racial issue in their country. Here is a good story on the topic. http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=824318
One funny thing from the story - Condeleeza Rice was wrong. Only 4% of Brazil’s population self-identify as “black.”
Race doesn’t “figure prominently” in events in Brazil. There aren’t race riots, there aren’t political parties dedicated to black rights, etc.
And race in Brazil certainly doesn’t “figure prominently” in US-Brazilian relations.
This is going to turn out to be bullshit just like the “Bush waving at Stevie Wonder” thing was. Just you wait and see. Hell, Maureen Dowd would be falling all over herself to write about this if it was true. So would about a hundred other pundits in the U.S. And yet, this incident is strangely absent from our pages.
It’s sad that some of the SDMB leftists can be just as prone to believe the slightest rumor, however insubstantial, about somebody they despise as some of our SDMB rightists can be.
gobear well in this whole little thread we have the OP who starts off w/a news article saying ‘assuming it’s true’ (ie let’s debate the underlying thing, but not attempting to vouch for it’s accuracy), two leftists, who’ve posted stuff other than ‘yuk yuk, look, it’s him acting stoopid again’, a couple of notable conservatives coming up with the usual “don’t bash Bush 'cause it’s unpatriotic and besides at least he was faithful” (tho admittedly the latter was in response to a knee jerk).
IOW, it’s all over the map.
As opposed to, say the traditional thread by a notable conservative who links to an op ed piece or two and proclaims ‘shouldn’t all liberals be ashamed about this’ or some such?
Let’s just say that neither side, either here or in real life, have a monopoly on idiocy and partisanship, eh?
Don’t paint me with your tarry little brush, Captain Knee-Jerk. I’m not the one who weighed in to post irrelevant and indefensible bullshit about what “matters” to an entire party – either entire party.
WRING, is right. Neither side has a monopoly on idiocy and partisanship. But I do wonder if some posters shouldn’t give a thought to whether they’re helping or hurting their own cause, when they put their idiocy and partisanship on such permanent display.
Just to touch bases here, the only reason I tossed out the OP was to address two points:
The veracity (or lack thereof) of Der Spiegel, and
The question of whether the U.S. press is giving Bush a free ride on “embarassing situations,” and whether that’s good or bad.
War on terrorism or no war on terrorism, I find the notion that the press should only report on the positive aspects of the President to be a tad disturbing. How are we (as in the voting public) supposed to make an informed decision about the quality of our leadership if we only get the squeaky-clean sanitized version of events?
(And now I hope Bush doesn’t try to defuse the Pakistan/India tensions by inviting everyone over to his ranch for a steak dinner. )
A couple interesting points: the article you reference says that the (mostly white) elite considers Brazil to be a racial democracy. I used to work for a black Southern woman who attended a conference in Brazil on people of color in the Western Hemisphere. Most folks at the conference were brown or black, and it’s from her reports that I learned about racial tension in Brazil.
Race means different things to different people in different cultures. What Brazilians call “brown,” US folks might call “black.” I suspect Rice was right, assuming the anecdote is true.
I maintain my original position, that understanding racial dynamics in Brazil is as crucial to understanding their power structures as understanding coffee plantations is to understanding Nicaraguan power structures. If Bush didn’t even know that there were black people in Brazil (If. If. If. Should I say that again, so that folks don’t think I’m credulous? If. Iffffff), then he probably didn’t know much about what was going on, economically and politically speaking, in Brazil.
Are you saying, Gobear, that you don’t believe it’s plausible? That the same man who asked “Is our children learning,” “Israelites,” and is glad he speaks “Mexican,” “Knows all about preservation, as I have preserved,” requires “100 years of community service” wouldn’t be capable of this massive gaffe?
I don’t notice too many RW’ers making that defense. Perhaps you don’t believe there are a slew of other underreported Bush gaffes? How many would you like me to cite. 10? 50? How about transcript cleanings – would five suffice?
No, no, I understand – he’s a moron, hence the “Sure, he’s as dumb as a block of wood, but he’s got knowledgeable advisers.” Well, I feel better already. And when our peevish box of rocks that we call Prez gets conflicting advice, you get the Middle East mess. Good job, Rhenquist! You sure know how to pick 'em.
“Do you have Blacks, too?” is up there in terms of cluelessness with “Wow, A supermarket scanner! Babs, look what the little people have!” yet another sign that our president is completely incompetent and out of touch.
And as they were saying on Crossfire – how does a global leader not know about Pele?
AceoSpades, you’re assuming what has yet to be proven. Certainly, I think W is dumb enough to have said it, but that doesn’t mean that he did.
And no, I definitely don’t want to see a sycophantic press report only positive aspects of the president. An adversarial press is what seperates us from countries like North Korean and Iraq. But it would be nice to be accurate as well.
The issue of race is a strange thing in Brazil. It is largely glossed over by the “elite” with things like the racial democracy stance. I had a course my last semester in college on racial identity in the Americas. One thing you will find in Brazil is that one drop of white or Native blood kicks you out of that racial category of Black. And that is very desired by those of darker skins. There is kind of a layering of subtle racism, with whites at the top, mixed bloods in the middle, and blacks at the bottom, and the shit slides downhill. I may be mistaken on this, but I believe the economic classes end up shaking out along similar lines to the racial categories. This over simplifies things a bit, but the mixed race part of Brazillian culture difuses some racial tension, allowing everyone to believe there isn’t a “race” problem in Brazil, when it in fact it exists right below the surface.
Enough of that hijack. As for the Der Spiegel story, I’d really need to see substantiation on that, or a little context. Too many in the media would be more than happy to jump on that. In addition, the Democrats would be on that quote like white on rice. Tough topic to debate when not convinced of its validity, even if it was printed by the “Time” magazine of Germany. Personally, I always thought Der Spiegel had a sensationalist side to it, but I’m not familiar enough to say if that is correct, either.
yea,sorry , gobear caught that on the second read through.
I was trying to point out that a fair number of folks (leftist types) were not assuming the article was true (ok, so in my case, it’s more like “I’m hoping, hoping, hoping” that it isn’t).
While I don’t care for knee-jerk anything-ism, I do have to grant that rjung’s OP assumption was not out of line.
Given a report in a foreign news magazine with which I was not familiar, I’d begin commenting on a story in it by a disclaimer “Assuming this story to be true…”
(BTW, Der Spiegel has had a sterling reputation for at least 30 years as probably the best German-language news source.)
So rjung was definitely not out of line in making that assumption, IMHO.
On the substantive question, I’d have to go with gobear’s last remark. I believe the President – any President, including the recent one that many Republicans (not all) were quick to slam for everything short of the burned toast for breakfast at Mary’s Fast Lunch in Topeka – is deserving of respect, and the idea that it’s much easier to make the right decisions with hindsight than when the ball is coming at you and you need to choose right now. But that doesn’t excuse inept behavior towards other people (suggested by the Spiegel story in the OP) nor substantial errors of judgment in administering the country’s affairs. Criticizing those, not petty sniping, is what the press and the opposition party is supposed to be for.
When did this exchange take place? I don’t think Bush and Cardoso have met face-to-face in a long while, not since November 2001 to my knowledge.
I haven’t seen this reported by any reputable news organizations except for Der Spiegel. I read The Guardian and The Independent regularly and I haven’t seen mention of this. I don’t think either of these papers would help cover up a major Bush-gaffe like this, so this raises questions as to the veracity of the story.
How did Der Spiegel come by this story? Was this leaked to them by someone in the White House (unlikely, they run a pretty tight ship)? I doubt they were present since the press corps is often not present for informal conversations between the President and other leaders. Often they get the info of what was said through a press release or a press conference, which often is not accompanied by an informal conversation.
If the story is true, then it’s a major knock on the intellect and common sense of Bush and a knock on the rest of the media (except for Der Spiegel) for covering it up. However, it’s not as if Der Spiegel is the only foreign news periodical attending these things. I doubt that many European papers would pass the chance to run a story on Bush asking a question this ridiculous. But I haven’t seen any mention of it. That’s what is making me doubt the truthfulness of the story.
However, it IS possible that the anecdote came from a leak that was only passed on to Der Spiegel so they are the only ones running the story. Unlikely, but possible.
No problem Jodi. My comment was just the type of partisan “bigotry” I have often railed against in other threads, and I wish I had seen that before I made a hypocrite of myself.
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