Haitian PM: Enough Hoopla Already About the Missionaries

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-02-05 08:54:00 UTC
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It's got all the hallmarks of an old-fashioned media feeding frenzy. The paparazzi swarming the car, the sunglassed celebrities inside. The waves and waves of media hits (over 6,900 articles this morning), the nonstop cataloguing of blow-by-blow developments. (Which, if you've been sleeping under a rock, look something like this: 1). Group of Baptists gets arrested in Haiti for trafficking 33 kids over the border, 2). Group claims they were trying to help orphans, 3). Most said 'orphans' actually turn out to have parents, 4). Group has been jailed and charged with kidnapping, and the judge in this case has three months to decide whether to prosecute. Oh yes, and the New York Times has found out that the group's ringleader owes back pay to previous employees....etc.)

It's not so much scenting blood in the water -- enough blood has been shed in Haiti for the past three weeks, and plenty of it (c.f. Anderson Cooper) has been caught on camera. And covering logistics, sanitation and tent shelters is less appealing. So this time the cameras are on the scent of something else -- something much more titillating. Something much more...blonde. (Or, to be perfectly accurate about everyone involved, brunette.) No wonder the Haitian Prime Minister is throwing up his hands. He's just announced that the death toll has risen to 212,000. He's got a wave of one million people on his hands who are homeless, and an impending threat of water-borne diseases to deal with.

And yet the case of the pony-tailed, be-hatted Baptists is what has the media agog.

"I believe it's a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one million people suffering in the streets," PM Jean-Max Bellerive says.

It's a distraction for people trying to understand what's happening in Haiti, and how best to help, too. As I wrote earlier this week, I get the native appeal of a story that can also function as a proxy morality play. And if it helps the Haitian government reassert its presence and authority, more power to them.  But that's about it. At this point, apart from repetitive rehashing, what's there to add? We're very, very good at pretending every story is all about Americans, but tricking ourselves into thinking the story of 10 Baptist missionaries behaving badly is anything more than just a tangential one -- well, that's an even more accomplished delusion.

Photo Credit: blmurch

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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