Circumcision is Painful
I'm not as pissed as much as I'm amazed: there is more interest in OJ Simpson's latest court predicament, and Dan Rather suing CBS for money he doesn't need and with which they don't wanna part, than what's really important tome, to my family, and to you.
For instance, if a young white girl were held down and her clitoris were cut off, it would probably make big news in this great country of ours. Yet this very event takes place all the time with little girls in Africa because of some cultural tradition that has more to do with sadism than religion. I am more up in arms about this calamity for children in a foreign country than I am about any "problem" of traffic congestion or weather inaccuracies which flood our local media. Somehow, their plight, the epidemic of AIDS in Africans, and the problems of genocide etc, seem more immediate to me than what appears as headlines to me every day.
The problem with American perceptions of what's important and what needs attention is the dropping-of-the-ball of the so-called "4th estate," -- the press, the media, TV news etc. Now that the "powers-that-be" conglomerates really own the mode of us citizens getting the true news--the "emmes," as my Jewish elder friends would call it--there is no end to the comforting lies we can be told. Orwell pictured a Big Brother society that only doled out what the "party" wanted the people to know. He would have laughed to know that the people are the ones who are content to only hear the party line.
And here we are--wake me up when you want to talk about the real issues.
Pot calling the kettle black... in America we routinely cut on penises for tradition and religion. So what we do it in the hospital so fewer kids are maimed and killed? So what a penis missing half its skin can still reach orgasm? So what you can avoid some diseases if you cut it off (You'd avoid testicular cancer if I cut your balls off, but nobody'd do that)? That doesn't change the fact that male circumcision in this country is underaged genital cutting without the consent of the genital's owner. We must look nuts to Africa, telling them to stop cutting their vaginas and start cutting their penises in the same breath.
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