Daily Mail Writes Shamefully Bad China Story

Bad articles deserve to die a silent, lonely death. Really bad articles, however, deserve to be thrown into the public stocks and ridiculed. This one from Daily Mail belongs with the latter.

It begins:

Ravaged by hunger and desperate for food, these are the sad pictures which show just how needy families in China are.

Oh yes, look at these people ravaged by hunger…

…desperate for food…

…and… smiling?

…and waiting IN AN ORDERLY FUCKING QUEUE.

First: can we agree that these people aren’t ravaged and desperate?

But second, and more importantly: we all know there is poverty in this world. How we compartmentalize that fact so that we can continue functioning without the anvil’s weight of guilt turning us into unproductive saps is up to us. We compartmentalize ugly realities every day, in fact, for otherwise we’d be too shocked at the world to ever properly function in it. The Daily Mail’s response, however, is to direct the end of a scraggly and wrinkled fingertip down upon the faces of the impoverished and say, “Poor people. POOOOOOOR PEOPLE.” They express sadness and pity at their existence, yet are immediately and immensely comforted when you change the subject to, say, the benefits of organic living, or hand over a hazelnut latte. The Daily Mail is like Miranda of The Tempest – “O wonder goodly goobies, O brave new world, how beauteous mankind!” — if Miranda were deposited not on an island but Taiyuan, Shanxi province: “O THE POVERTY, MY WEEPING HEART.“ The Daily Mail is the worst type of privileged first-world colonialist asshole.

In the interest of fairness, here’s the article’s second and third paragraphs:

Parents and children queued for hours, just so they could snatch a few free cabbages which were being given away.

Shopping mall bosses in northern China gave away 200 tons of greens to their desperate customers.

POOOOOOOOOOR PEOPLE.

For a fun time, read to the end and learn about how oat is integral to Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

(H/T Alicia)

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