boston progress radio

Hi loyal readers. You may have noticed that many of the regular contributors to BPRLive have not been contributing much recently. Thankfully, Sudo has been more than holding his own and keeping content fresh. I think with the rise of Twitter and inevitable craziness that comes with the arrival of spring – plus the fact that members of the Boston Progress family (Sejal, Emily, Scott, Tula) are in the process of moving away for good – it’s been hard to get people to spend more than 30 seconds writing anything for the Internets.

Enough excuses. We’ll write what we write when we write it. And today I decided to throw something up about this mark-ass buster named Alec Baldwin. I always had a pretty high opinion of Alec Baldwin – he’s a very talented actor (remember his scene in Glengarry Glen Ross? Greatest seven minute cameo in the history of cinema…) and actually has used his celebrity for some stuff that most high-profile stars would not do, like calling Dick Cheney a terrorist, then taking it back and calling him a “lying, thieving oil whore.” Not to mention he puts on a comedic-acting clinic every Thursday on “30 Rock.”

So I thought he was a dude you could actually feel good about liking until he went on Letterman and made a joke about wanting a “Filipino mail-order bride…or a Russian one” so he could have more children.

Yuk it up fellas. And then remember Susana Remerata was killed at 25 years-old by the husband who mail-ordered her from the Philippines in 1995. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and her two friends were also killed. Or Anastasia King – 20 year-old from Kyrgyzstan, I guess she’d be the “Russian one” Baldwin talked about – was strangled to death by the husband who ordered her.

I understand people do say ignorant things sometimes, and it doesn’t make them villains. It means they made a mistake, and they usually apologize and it blows over. This isn’t about that.

What this is about is that our world is corrupt that there is a thriving industry of buying and selling people- in these cases, young women – after which, they end up in a new country speaking a new language, with usually very little understanding of what rights they have (t)here. It’s fairly common for American men to “order” a bride, repeatedly assault and rape her, then have the marriage annulled on the grounds that she deceived the man into marriage, so the courts will send her back to where she came from.

What is so disturbing about it all is that anyone could think it was appropriate to joke about situations that are nothing less than tragic.

I don’t have time to tend my garden. I might have to purchase 4 or 5 slaves from Africa. HAHA!

In our American society, I get the feeling that people think it’s cool to joke about it because they assume the “grooms” in these situations are loner fat dudes holed up in their basements, who are essentially harmless. They ignore the fact that these lovable losers repeatedly commit acts of emotional and physical violence against a human being who has no real agency in that “relationship.”

Part of me is surprised we aren’t in a place in history when we realize that a “Filipino mail-order bride” isn’t a punchline.

Last 5 posts by giles

• Review: I Love Yous Are for White People - October 23rd, 2009
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• ...while the old folks dance at your family reunion... - August 17th, 2009
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Tags: News.