Upside Bill Maher's Head
I watched the Chilean mine rescue on TV until the first miner came out. It was a tremendous “feel good story” that made for a compelling drama, but I think I was less surprised than most that the Chileans were able to pull it off so smoothly (I know they had help from specialists from a lot of countries including ours). I’m also not at all surprised that the 33 miners got through their ordeal and came out in such good mental and physical condition (see attached NYT link): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14medical.html?emc=eta1
When we moved to Chile in 2000 for a two-year assignment, the lessons came fast and early. My first month there I went on a mission with my Chilean Marine unit to the south of the country where we reconnoitered an isthmus next to an icy lake and a huge glacier. We disembarked over the side of the ship into rubber boats WWII – style and started motoring to the rocky beach where we bivouacked. During the boat ride I saw some amazing things; including floating chunks of ice the size of Volkswagens, but another stunner was when a Chilean Marine busted out a bar of chocolate, unwrapped it in front of us, and started breaking off pieces and handing them out to everybody in the boat. The conscript got one, the Captain got one, the Sergeant got one, the Private got one, I got one, etc., until there was one piece left for the original owner of the chocolate bar. Now this was not some organizational chocolate bar. He had bought it with his money at the store back in Viña before we got on the ship. I saw that process repeated many times my first week in the field with bread, peanuts, coffee, etc. Nobody saw the stuff they brought as just their stuff. It was shared with everybody.
That was not what we typically did in the U.S. Marines (or maybe it’s just not what I did).
So I’m not surprised to see the Chileans did well on this, the world’s trickiest mine rescue, both above and below ground.
In my two years in Chile I saw some things that made me very glad and proud to be from the U.S., but I also saw some traits (like their social cohesion) that made me wish we were actually a little more like them. And that’s the great thing about getting a chance to live overseas, you can incorporate the things you like from another culture into your own actions and attitudes and reject the things you don’t like.
But you have to be open to the possibility that somebody else may do some things better. Or you at least have to be open to the possibility that a different way to do something is just as good as your way to do something.
Here’s a guy who slaughters about 8 Spanish surnames in the process of celebrating his own cultural ignorance. He gleefully claims to not have heard of this year’s Nobel Prizewinner for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, (a writer from Perú who now lectures at a university in the U.S.) or any of the other Nobel winners from Spain or Latin America. It bothers me that somebody this willfully ignorant can be on TV without it being confined to the Jerry Springer show. It bothers me that a lifetime of achievement can become a punchline for a joke because Bill Maher seems to think the only things worth knowing about take place in English within the borders of the U.S.
Bill Maher should get out more, read more, and think more.
Or he should just shut his pie hole.
