{"id":97,"date":"2006-08-02T21:15:33","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T02:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=97"},"modified":"2006-08-02T21:15:33","modified_gmt":"2006-08-03T02:15:33","slug":"why-is-the-week-lying-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=97","title":{"rendered":"Why is The Week Lying to Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Week<\/a> <\/span>magazine has a section for giving little distilled versions of editorials from all over the world. Last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s issue mentioned a Nigerian newspaper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial on female circumcision.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how The Week opens the article (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m typing it from the printed version, because the search engine on The Week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s site is wonky):<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no wonder activists have failed to eradicate female circumcision in Africa…. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genital mutilation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a barbaric violation of human rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was interested in reading the entire editorial, so I tracked it down online. <\/span>You can read it here<\/a> (free registration required).<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading the editorial, I was a little surprised to find that there wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a single word about how anyone resents anything.<\/p>\n

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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genital mutilation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say that the term was counter-productive or even unhelpful.<\/p>\n

What the hell was The Week talking about? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you. It was trying to play us.<\/p>\n

The editorial simply argued that legislation won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work, while education will. But is that sexy? Does that get us worked up? No.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much more exciting to stroke the West\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already overgrown sense of guilt and our sensitivity to cultural relativism. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all wrong again! We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re outsiders calling them barbarians! Of course they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so stupid!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Curses.<\/p>\n

Update. They did it again<\/a>, and I cancelled my subscription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Week magazine has a section for giving little distilled versions of editorials from all over the world. Last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s issue mentioned a Nigerian newspaper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial on female circumcision. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how The Week opens the article (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m typing it from the printed version, because the search engine on The Week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s site is wonky): It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}