“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu: When my time comes, I want the option of an assisted death
Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have spent my time working for dignity for the living. I have campaigned passionately for people in my country and the world over to have their God-given rights.
Now, as I turn 85 Friday, with my life closer to its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. Just as I have argued firmly for compassion and fairness in life, I believe that terminally ill people should be treated with the same compassion and fairness when it comes to their deaths. Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth. I believe that, alongside the wonderful palliative care that exists, their choices should include a dignified assisted death.
There have been promising developments as of late in California and Canada , where the law now allows assisted dying for terminally ill people, but there are still many thousands of dying people across the world who are denied their right to die with dignity. Two years ago, I announced the reversal of my lifelong opposition to assisted dying in an op-ed in the Guardian. But I was more ambiguous about whether I personally wanted the option, writing: “I would say I wouldn’t mind.” Today, I myself am even closer to the departures hall than arrivals, so to speak, and my thoughts turn to how I would like to be treated when the time comes. Now more than ever, I feel compelled to lend my voice to this cause.
Ester Wang: How can Fox News think it’s OK to mock Asian Americans in 2016?
How many trite, stale Asian stereotypes can you cram into four minutes? That’s the question that Jesse Watters, the buffoonish correspondent on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, answered for us earlier this week in his latest man-on-the-street “Watters’ World” segment. He takes a trip to Manhattan’s Chinatown, ostensibly to interview Chinese American voters on their thoughts on the presidential election. But it quickly becomes clear that the people he encounters are mere props for his (decidedly unfunny) jokes riffing on stereotypes about massage parlors to herbal medicine.
He kicks off the segment by asking two women if he needs to bow to them, following that up by asking a street vendor if the watches he’s selling are stolen. If that’s not enough, he then asks an elderly Chinese man and woman questions in English, when it’s clear they don’t understand him, and decides to throw in random references to karate and taekwondo – non-Chinese martial arts – for good measure. All of this is interspersed with clips of Mr Miyagi from Karate Kid (who is Japanese, if that needed to be said), Bruce Lee and giggling Asian schoolgirls from an Austin Powers movie, set to a backdrop of what I like to call chopstick music. It’s so over the top that it reads almost as a parody of itself.
Eugene Robinson: Why bother having a vice-presidential debate at all?
Tuesday’s encounter between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence was substantive at times and contentious throughout. But the eminences who run the Commission on Presidential Debates should ask themselves this question: Why have a vice-presidential debate at all?
Of course there should be some sort of public forum for voters to get to know the individuals who might find themselves, as the cliche goes, a heartbeat away from the presidency. But the debate format told us little about Kaine and Pence that we didn’t already know.[..]
I know what Kaine and Pence got out of the evening: They established themselves as national political figures and also managed to avoid harming their respective candidates’ chances. The benefit for voters, however, was harder to discern.
Emer O’Toole: Spare us the sight of men discussing abortion – especially politicians
Do you know what’s a relief about Hillary Clinton running for president? There’ll be no rage-inducing section in the debates when two men discuss what reproductive rights they’ll attempt to grant or deny women should they be elected.
Oh wait. I forgot about the vice-presidential debate. Darn.
My first reaction to Mike Pence and Tim Kaine’s head-to-head was to try to remember how or why anyone watched presidential debates when they were just two white guys interrupting each other. And my second, when Pence introduced the topic of abortion, was a feeling of creeping dread. These two men were about to climb into the wombs of all American women and plant their flags – an operation every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds.
Elaine Quijano, the moderator, asked both outspokenly religious candidates if they could discuss a time when they struggled to balance their faith and a public policy position. Kaine described his personal struggle in implementing the death penalty. And Pence, in an immaculate segue, talked about how he struggled to balance his faith with a Clinton policy position. On abortion.
Jocelyn McCalla: After Hurricane Matthew, will aid predators ravage Haiti?
On Tuesday, Hurricane Matthew moved slowly through Haiti’s south-west armed with heavy rain and 145 miles per hour wind. Any country subjected to a category 4 hurricane would suffer great damage to its infrastructure. Haiti, however, experienced a catastrophe.
Because of that, you are certain to see more pictures of a devastated Haiti in the next few days. Yet westerners wanting to help shouldn’t assume that there are no resources available to Haitians in country. They may not be sufficient and may become depleted quickly, but there are resources. While charitable goods may provide temporary relief, they can hinder recovery in the long run to the extent that they can have a negative impact on the local economy.
A great problem in Haiti is a lack of investment – not humanitarian funds – and that is evident in the aftermath of Matthew. Neither Haitian authorities nor their international allies have invested much in response capacity. The international community’s lack of trust and confidence in Haitian authorities leads to reliance on international NGOs. This results in a piecemeal approach to addressing Haiti’s serious shortcomings.
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