Archive for May, 2007
Is it only me or are there other people out there who believe the Polish authorities should have more important things to do than investigate Teletubbie Tinky Winky?
This from the BBC today:
A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.
The spokesperson for children’s rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
“I noticed he was carrying a woman’s handbag,” she told a magazine. “At first, I didn’t realise he was a boy.”
EU officials have criticised Polish government policy towards homosexuals.
Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children’s show should be broadcast on public television.
In the face of criticism, Sowinska evidently said the Teletubbies weren’t damaging to the nation’s children, but the investigation continues.
This is all part of a cultural clash currently underway in Poland, with a conservative ruling coalition that has riled liberals at home and abroad. From a recent TOL article:
Like America’s famous red state-blue state divide, Poland’s cultural clash pits what sometimes appear to be two separate countries against each other. On one side of the barricades is liberal, urbane, and cosmopolitan Poland with its fashionable Warsaw boutiques, trendy cafes, and chatty secular media. On the other is a deeply traditional, conservative, rural – and sometimes xenophobic – nation, fearful of change and distrustful of outsiders.
So we’ll have to wait and see if that divide now leads to the banning of Tinky Winky. By the way, the late Jerry Falwell also targeted Tinky Winky, about eight years ago…
An article in today’s Czech daily, Mlada fronta DNES, focuses in on a case of a teacher who beat a student in a classroom in the small town of Jablunka. The problem for the teacher was that someone from the class filmed the incident with his mobile phone and posted it on YouTube (the clip has since been removed).
According to the article, dozens of clips from Czech schools can be found on YouTube, but most of them innocent.
Oh yeah, the teacher was only given a warning and continues to teach.
Also, in case you missed it, according to a post yesterday on the popular blog BoingBoing:
Today, the main opposition party in the Croatian parliament (SDP - Social Democratic Party) walked out of Parliament after Mr. Ivica Kirina (the Interior Minister) accused the SDP of publishing videos about him on YouTube.
Apparently, people have been posting montages of Mr. Kirina’s rather comedic public appearances. For more of the story and some of the clips, visit this Croatian blog.
Undoubtedly the plight of the Roma has improved over the past decade in crucial ways (better educational opportunities, fewer skinhead attacks, etc.), but greater tolerance among the general population seems only incremental, if that. For every time I read more sensitive coverage in the media, I also read articles that highlight the ethnicity of criminals (i.e. Roma) for no other reason than to play up stereotypes. Or I hear bad Roma jokes, even from “normal”, i.e. not skinhead-looking Czechs.
Yesterday on the way to work, I overheard a young kid, probably about 12-13, telling such a joke to a group of female teenagers (it looks like one of them was an older sister, traveling with her friends on a school trip, and had taken her younger brother along). I was on the other side of the aisle so it was hard to hear the joke and I couldn’t at all make out the punchline, but it went like this: “A German came to the Czech Republic to shoot game in the forest. Along the way, he met a local Czech that told him that he’d have to pay 5000 crowns to shoot a bear, but he’d be paid 2000 crowns for every gypsy he shot. So the German shot three gypsies and demanded his money. And the Czech told him:…” Sorry no punchline, but you get the point.
It seemed like his sister looked around to see if anyone was listening or not. Or maybe I was just being optimistic that she might have an inkling that this was not politically incorrect. In any case, she and her friends laughed and the kid moved on to other jokes.
At first glance it looks bizarre: Yesterday, Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon proposed fines to limit extravagant weddings and funerals in his country–the poorest of the countries of the former Soviet Union. If his proposal is accepted, guest lists for weddings would be limited to no more than 200 people and weddings could last no longer than a day. Wedding processions could include four cars maximum. As for funerals, only 100 guests would be allowed and they would be permitted to eat only one meal after the ceremony.
I can only imagine the first reaction from around the world: another wacky Central Asian leader acting like his country is his own personal fiefdom. How can you limit something so personal as a wedding or a funeral? What right does the president have to tell a bride or groom that they have to limit their guest list to only their closest 200 relatives and friends? But is it really so outlandish? Is the tradition driving families into ruin because peer pressure is forcing them to go into debt to feed 500 people for three days running? I’m no expert on this, but I’d be pretty curious to see the reaction on the fledgling Tajik blogosphere. For a personal experience of a Tajik wedding, see this post on neweurasia, a project to encourage blogging in Central Asia that TOL shares in.
Long in development, and slow on the uptake, this blog is finally live! For my first post, I’d like to focus on a topic that will be a common one around here: the slow-but-sure improvement in the quality of life in the new member states, especially in the country I’ve called home for most of the past 15 years, the Czech Republic. This is more than just an economic story, however; just as importantly, it represents the building, piece-by-piece, of a civil society that fills in the gaps left by the state. Don’t worry: I know the term “civil society” is thrown around left and right, for this or that purpose, leaving us all wondering what is really means. I’ll get specific below.
But first: I’ve heard people say that the story now taking place in Central Europe is essentially a business story and that media organizations such as TOL should be focusing their efforts on tracking economic development. Well, I don’t really agree. This is much more to it than that.
Sure there are signs everywhere that Czechs are living better than before: the crown is at near record highs versus the dollar and euro, and average salaries continue to rise. That explains, for instance, the headline in Tuesday’s Mlada fronta DNES: “Vacations for Czechs are the cheapest in history”. With more money–and strong money–in their pockets, Czechs are heading off in record numbers to places like Cuba and Thailand, exotic locales only for the richest of the rich in the years that followed the Velvet Revolution. And the average price of vacations are increasing–not because of price increases per se, but because Czechs are choosing more expensive hotels and more fancy destinations.
So that’s a business story and an interesting one at that. But more behind the scenes are the stories that indicate how a growing number of people, probably with more time and money on their hands, are looking around and thinking about how they can change existing tradition, apathy, and law to better their lives and those of their fellow citizens. In some ways, this is a matter of closing the gap with the “West”, of Czechs learning to demand the same rights as their counterparts in mature democracies, but they are already sometimes surpassing their more conservative neighbors (re: the new Czech law on same-sex partnerships).
Earlier this week, again in DNES, but buried inside the paper, was a short article about Czech women who tragically give birth to stillborn babies. Not surprisingly, even those with supportive partners and families have great difficulties dealing with their loss–especially when medical personnel fail in providing much empathy (one woman recalled being told by a nurse a few days later that she should have already gotten over it). Yet no support group of “victims” exists.
Now one woman has decided to change that. She has already received permission to serve as the Czech representative of the International Stillborn Society and plans to form a chapter in the Czech Republic. It’s a comparatively small segment of society (300 women per year go through the ordeal), but for those 300, such a support group would almost surely help them deal with the tragedy and improve their lives.
Multiply that experience by many times and you can see pretty perceptibly how such initiatives are contributing to a society that has started more and more to address issues ignored in the past over more supposedly “urgent” issues. Sometimes, it takes a shocking case of abuse (the papers have been full of stories about a young boy tied up by his mother in a closet, with politicians left and right now offering antidotes), but the real changes are occurring more behind the scenes, off the radar screen of the media…
I’m calling this blog “The Regional Wrap” because I’m intending to post about whatever interests me across the vast region TOL covers: Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. Since I’ve lived in Prague for almost a dozen years, chances are you’ll find more here about the Czech Republic than other countries, but I’ll try not to be Czech-centric.
In addition to region-specific posts, I’ll be posting on several other topics that interest me a lot these days. One is blogging, particularly in relation to its potential role as an outlet for free speech and free expression in repressive societies. In part, these posts will reflect the progress we’re making on our own experiment in that area: a project to encourage blogging in Belarus and Central Asia.
Another theme that I plan to tackle is the role of public media in the “digital” world—how public media (like TOL) can take advantage of new, so-called citizen journalism tools such as blogging and podcasting to better serve their public role, especially by becoming more interactive and responsive. But no discussion about all that potential should take place without addressing the financial sustainability of adopting all this cool stuff. Of course this exploration will have an undercurrent of self-interest—or rather TOL-interest—since we are always on the lookout for cutting-edge tools that won’t only enrich our journalistic output but will also enhance our business model. Like other exclusively online, public affairs-oriented media, TOL is in search of the digital Holy Grail: a business model that will make TOL less dependent on grants while allowing us to continue to practice a type of journalism that often includes themes neglected by “commercial” media.
Last but not least, I’m also planning to fill a gaping hole in CEE coverage: more news of the odd and unusual. Believe me, this region has just as much in that area as other places in the world, but remains tragically undercovered in the weird department. These posts will be filed under the category: “Off the Deep End”.
