Why is The Week Lying to Me?

The Week magazine has a section for giving little distilled versions of editorials from all over the world. Last week’s issue mentioned a Nigerian newspaper’s editorial on female circumcision.

Here’s how The Week opens the article (I’m typing it from the printed version, because the search engine on The Week’s site is wonky):

It’s no wonder activists have failed to eradicate female circumcision in Africa…. They’ve gone about it the wrong way, using a condescending tone of moral superiority. Women in Nigeria understandably resent being told by outsiders that their traditional rite of passage…is a form of “genital mutilation” and a barbaric violation of human rights.

I was interested in reading the entire editorial, so I tracked it down online. You can read it here (free registration required).

Reading the editorial, I was a little surprised to find that there wasn’t a single word about how anyone resents anything.

Or how anyone was being considered condescending. Or how anyone had the wrong tone (or one of moral superiority). No mention of human rights, or barbarism. No mention of outsiders telling women in Nigeria anything (unless the Nigerian government are the outsiders). And though it did mention the term “genital mutilation,” it didn’t say that the term was counter-productive or even unhelpful.

What the hell was The Week talking about? I’ll tell you. It was trying to play us.

The editorial simply argued that legislation won’t work, while education will. But is that sexy? Does that get us worked up? No.

It’s so much more exciting to stroke the West’s already overgrown sense of guilt and our sensitivity to cultural relativism. “Hey, we’re all wrong again! We’re outsiders calling them barbarians! Of course they don’t like it. We’re so stupid!”

I like The Week. But am I going to have to look up every editorial they feature? The whole point of The Week is that it saves me time from, well, having to look it all up myself.

Curses.

Update. They did it again, and I cancelled my subscription.