Oh, Those Chinese . . . How Could They?
by KTKAugust 14th, 2008
There’s been some talk about the Chinese government’s manipulation of the broadcast of the Olympics opening ceremonies, in particular the fact that they switched another girl, who was deemed prettier, for the 7-year-old girl who had been chosen to sing the opening anthem, and made the first girl lip-synch to the second-girl’s voice.
Jay Nordlinger, best known for putting stupid things to say in George W. Bush’s mouth, contributes his insights to The Corner
What a thing to do to a seven-year-old girl — tell her she’s too ugly to appear in public, though the party will be happy to use her voice. That’s one of the worst things about Communist and dictatorial regimes: They are cruel to little girls.
He goes out of his way to note that he’s not kidding about this, and has in fact made the same argument elsewhere. For some reason, he also draws a parallel between this outrage and the casting practices of US opera companies, after first working in a racist joke. I don’t understand the way his mind works, but he’s a senior editor at NR, which explains a lot.
What I want to know is, how is this different from the far creepier practices of pre-teen beauty pageants that are ubiquitous in the US? It’s not like ranking and selecting girls for a combination of both talent and looks is somehow peculiarly Chinese, or that, in the end, such vicious meat markets don’t always wind up dividing winners and losers by tiny, superficial criteria. And casting adult performers for roles based on their looks also goes without saying; things are a bit different in the opera world, but I never understood why anyone acted surprised by it.
Suddenly this cruel insult by the Chinese is an offense to womanhood worldwide. The Corner is taking a stance against tracking girls’ careers by superficial physical standards, while they also vociferously oppose Titles IX and X here at home. Their characteristic Red-baiting is literally reflexive: it bypasses the upper nervous system entirely and just spews out as an uncontrollable muscle spasm. As Obama said in a different context, but with universal relevance: “It’s as if they take pride in being ignorant.”
It’s oppressive, and sad, that Politburo members can pass personal judgment on who meets the attractiveness standards of the Chinese government, but I can’t imagine it’s in any way better - and on sheer volume alone it’s probably much worse - that we’ve farmed that out to a profit-making system that preys on every bit of the cynicism, celebrity-worship, and body-image pathology that our society pressure-cooks girls in from birth. The Miss America pageants are said to be the single largest source of college scholarship money for women in the US - a travesty in itself, that speaks volumes about how much we care about what aspects of women’s lives - but each pageant, at each level, has just one winner, chosen in pretty much exactly the same way the Olympics singer was chosen in China. At least that little girl won’t lose her chance at an education over this.
Categories: Culture, Education, General, How Capitalism Will Ruin You, News & Current Events, Olympics |
Leave it to you to defend Communist China. The action concerning the little girl was by a government official. “Beauty” pageants are private. Socialists have trouble distinquishing between the two, don’t they?
But the Chinese ran a singing competition, not a beauty competition. When the competition yielded a winner - a little girl who could sing wonderfully - the officials pulled a switch and told her, in effect: “Sorry, you’re too ugly to be seen in public.” That’s peculiarly cruel.
But what’s more interesting in the post above is the discomfort the author experiences upon hearing criticism of the Chinese, leading to the reflexive Lefty retort: “Hey, we’re just as bad!”
For example: The millions murdered by Chairman Mao, and the Chinese gulag.
5…4…3…2…1 - “Hey, what about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo!”
the Chinese ran a singing competition, not a beauty competition
We have no idea what they ran. If they told the girls they would be chosen only for singing ability, and then introduced other criteria, that’s unfair, but (1) we don’t know they did that, (2) it seems very unlikely that they would have done that, given the intense emphasis on physical appearance not just on the part of the Chinese organizers but throughout the Olympics, and (3) that has nothing to do with whether the criteria they actually used are appropriate. The complaints, I gather, are that they shouldn’t have allowed physical appearance to be a deciding criterion, but that’s clearly not a well-thought-out objection. As I pointed out, we make precisely the same distinctions all the time, to girls the same age and even younger; it’s just as cruel, but nobody minds. This sudden concern over holding girls’ careers and talents hostage to subjective and sexist standards of physical appearance is just a convenient rationalization.
My reference to US practices was an argument against the sincerity of the conservative critics, by way of a comparative test of their consistency (which they failed), not a tu quoque defense of the Chinese. Try to pay attention.
I feel no particular discomfort at Nordlinger’s incoherent and non sequitur ramblings. Just a familiar feeling of amused contempt.
So, does anyone else ever wonder whether the abject irony of some “conservative” commenters is some kind of subtle performance art?
It takes a real talent for double-think to accuse “reflexive Lefty retort” while responding to a demonstration of hypocracy as if it was a defense of the wrong-doing that is itself the thing showing hypocracy.
It’s not “Hey, we’re just as bad!”, but “Hey, you don’t seem to think it’s bad when we do it!”.
(1) we don’t know they did that,
Yes, we do. Do some research.
Re: Beauty pageants, we’re probably in clear apples to oranges territory.
But, this same sort of thing is done in the U.S. all the time. Off the top of my head, remember C&C Music Factory anybody? (Favorite US musical act of Borat, btw). The woman featured in their videos was not the woman in the band, the actual female group member who sang was fat, and was subbed for by some other woman in the videos (oddly, I didn’t find the sub particularly attractive either).
This also happened in the LL Cool J video for the song, “Doin’ It.” Chick on the record was fat, chick in the video “performing” was hot.
This falls into the, the more innocuous the subject, the more knowledgeably I respond bucket…
I can’t believe you passed up a golden opportunity to type “Milli Vanilli”
this same sort of thing is done in the U.S. all the time
In addition to those there was the “White House dog” business.
I can’t believe you passed up a golden opportunity to type “Milli Vanilli”
My examples were of specific instances were the true performer was not presented to the public for the specific purpose of presenting somebody more attractive instead. I don’t know what the specific circumstances were surrounding using Rob and Fab as public faces as opposed to the actual performers. I know that in my two examples the reason was specifically the unattractive physical appearance of the real artist.
Miss America pageants provided ~45 million USD in scholarships and loan repayments over 2006. The United States Department of Health and Human Services provided 89.4 million USD in scholarships and loan repayments for one group of programs. What is said isn’t, apparently, accurate.
I have no place to speak about the morality of either the Chinese government or of Miss America pageants, beyond one simple fact. The Miss America pageants make very clear what they are grading, and stick to that metric.