I can remember American presidents from the second half of the 20th century only if I link them to Argentine facts. Like many Latin Americans, I tend to like them or not depending on how friendly they were to us. Like everywhere in the world, “us” doesn’t always mean a heterogeneous group of national fellows but rather a group of like minded politicized people. We seldom judge then the United States presidents with regular standards and our options are often incomprehensible to American pundits and politicians. Along with our political ideas, we have our emotional issues and also our sometimes absurd history. Our feelings are usually ignored by common American citizens since Latin America is not something that weighs in their hearts as the United States weighs in ours. Our relationship is uneven.
In the middle of a new American presidential race, we are not sure about who will finally win and less about what the new president will mean to us. At this point, we couldn’t say a Democrat will be better than a Republican or the reverse. In Argentina, we have seen all colors and shades. Carter was wonderful to some of us, because he stood for human rights while the military were still in power, and awful to others, because he was seen as someone validating the defeated guerrilla. For a long time, Reagan was God because he acted like a true man of the people –we saw him as a Peronist- and then Satan because he helped Thatcher during the Malvinas-Falkland war. Bush was seen as an elegant conservative who finally accepted that Peronism could be democratic and even promote capitalism and freedom. While some hated him for being the rich Americans and corporations’ representative, others seized the day and helped to restore the damaged friendship with the U.S., creating new links and also making of Argentina an extra-Nato ally. Clinton was a friend to almost everyone along those same lines, confirming that after Reagan it became harder to stick to the usual distinction that Peronists fit with Democrats while anti-Peronist match better Republicans: in the new century affinity seemed more centered on the recognition or denial of global modernity.
Bush the Second was hailed with great expectations, for he was seen as the one who would unite the Americas in a Continental Union, such as the European Union, going beyond the Free Trade Area for the Americas, that first project installed by his father and followed by Clinton,. After 9/11, President Bush had other worries than Latin America. During the financial crisis of December 2001, he didn’t help Argentina in the right direction, in spite of being the Latin American country most steadily engaged into modern capitalism. It took him too long to react to the new Latin American crisis and to promote again with the required energy a continental trade union: in the meantime Argentina as well as many other disappointed Latin American countries had switched to leftist governments. The Latin American left doesn’t automatically means, as some could think, open minded people in charge, caring for the poor. It is usually represented by anti-progressive populist governors, not prone to democracy or to any kind of capitalism that could create the so needed wealth, and who always perceive government and state as a source for their centralized power. For them, federalism is only a word in the Constitution and they haven’t yet discovered its meaning, less its practice.
Obama or McCain? I like Obama because he still has to face the race issue -an endless struggle against prejudice that someone has to win one day- and also because he sincerely cares for those who have less. I like Mc Cain because he is a military like Perón, with a clear sense of national priorities and a great courage to address them. As a modernist, I like Obama because he seems aware that help for the poor and minorities has nowadays to come from something different than centralized welfare and I like McCain because of the same. As a Latin American, I like Obama because Latin American people of equally mixed races will change some of their feelings towards the United States only by looking themselves in him, but I prefer McCain because he understands better the need and benefits of a trade union in the Americas.
Times have changed and minds seem to be finally catching up. Some old passions, like the Latin American anti-Americanism revivified during the Bush era, will maybe fade after November if the new president renews our so challenged friendship. He is welcome to come down South to learn and teach us, once again, how freedom can be the true basis of a society; also, how prosperity can be reached. If he does well, he will have the right to claim that after him there were not so many Latinos knocking at the border trying to get into the U.S. or getting in illegally. He would have applied the basic rule for a U.S. and Latin America successful relationship: to export the American dream. When this dream becomes available across the Continent, every one will stay happily at home.
Democrat or Republican, we will judge the new president according to how well he realizes that when we hate Americans we are just telling them that we love them. Admiration and envy have been intertwined in our souls for two centuries, but as equally Americans in the same continental land, as children of the same independency wars and as partners of the same Constitution, we know at the bottom of our hearts that we are doomed to be together.
Will the American people, after elections and with their new president, reconsider their feelings and reciprocate ours? Not only tango needs two. Foreign policy does as well.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
RED LEAVES, YELLOW PAPER
My imaginary life in New England, more precisely in Concord, Massachusetts, can only be explained by the fact that I grew up as one more of the girls in the March family. Even if as Latin American I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, within a real family of my own, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, indulged me with a different kind of existence.
Novels create worlds in which we are allowed to live as long as our reading lasts. Some of those worlds linger in our psyches delighting us for a while to fade later. Others, instead, remain embedded in our memory and, as a lived experience they borrow its emotional quality. Literature and language are not innocent at the time of expressing a precise community and its values. Even in translation, Little Women didn’t fail its purpose of educating young girls in the values of freedom and self reliance. In the middle of twentieth century, Latin American families had no strategies to deal with wild rebellious girls wanting to be themselves. Louisa May Alcott did more for women in the world and on behalf of the American dream than any politician would do in the century to come.
Without a name, because the word Concord was not mentioned and less its historical role in the United States independence, this New England Victorian town became my inner promised land. I had no immigration fancies and no endearing links as later in life; I barely knew at that time about the existence of the United States as a different country than mine. I only craved for the love, solidarity and freedom which blossomed in that household ruled by an open minded mother. In the same emotional trip toward freedom, I took Jo as a role model, without knowing that writing was my call. She inspired me because she was boyish and temperamental. She loved books as I did. I was a reader; she was a writer, someone enabled to dream and to give dreams an entity through words. Jo was not my exclusive mirror of a future to come: many other Latin American women writers have reported the same enlightening experience.
Not only mothers and their education in freedom which nurtured literary minds were different in the magic town of Concord. Trees had red leaves during the fall and houses had garrets where Jo would hide to write. Yellow paper would become later in my mind another colored distinct mark of New England. Wannabe women writers used yellow legal pads to scribble her stories or letters, as in Daddy Long Legs, by Jean Webster, a novel in which the potential of women was also exalted in the scenery of the typical up state New York college.
If red leaves and yellow paper were a luscious novelty and garrets the place where dreams were dreamt in houses with a nook for each need, Concord had more to offer. I was not the only one to have benefited of the experience of a Concord family in the immediate pre and post Civil War era. The Argentine President Sarmiento, elected in 1868 while he was the Argentine ambassador to the United States, had close ties to Concord. Horace Mann and later his widow, Mary Mann, introduced Sarmiento in the knowledge of the American educational system and helped him to adapt it to Argentina. Sarmiento hired a set of brave and free American women school teachers and started in Argentina a public education program which was a national pride for almost a century and a model for other Latin American countries. Sarmiento had also met Emerson in Concord, and if none of the meeting was recorded, at least one of Emerson’s reflections remained as a mysterious legacy: “There is a great education in the snow.” Often quoted, the famous sentence still distils the quaint image of New England winters.
There is snow in the first Christmas at the beginning of Little Women; snow while Laurie, the boy next door, plays with a sled; and more snow freezing romantic love as a pledge until the end of childhood. New England’s nature became part of my memories. I listed the snow as well as the woods and flowers, narrow rivers and ponds I would later find in Thoreau and Emerson, with the unmistakable feeling that I had been there before.
Little Women, as the top of the iceberg of the rich Concord based literature, introduced the past century Latin American children into a larger American project. Little Women as the other Alcott’s stories, An Old Fashioned Girl, Little Men, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, and Jo’s Boys represented not only a program on how to build strong family ties but on how to organize an equally strong community around common ideals of freedom. Alcott’s education was also on what I didn’t know at the time was a constitutional right, the pursuit of happiness. Women were also invited to the feast and that permission made all the difference for girls like me. My childhood days were also Evita’s days, and I can assure many of her dreams were also based in these embedded images of American happiness as seen in the movies and cartoons. The model of Californian chalets she picked up to build her neighborhoods and towns for the poor comes out straight from a later version of the American Dream started in Concord. Little Women grew up with the new generations of women and, the lesson on freedom being learnt, nobody reads Alcott any more.
Concord’s light seems to have dimmed while a heavy anti-American feeling spreads these days everywhere in the world, including my country. Below the world’s anger for a supposed American imperialism invading Iraq lies the powerful envy for a country which has succeed to be the richest in the world. The one which on top of that has not sacrificed happiness to wealth but, on the contrary, created wealth to allow that happiness. Hippies rediscovered Thoreau in the 60’s, when the goal was to be free from repression and to reach a fulfilled life according to nature. Isn’t it time for the skeptic world in search for a better life to revisit good old literary Concord? The body has been taken care. Does now humankind dream of spiritual happiness? Has the new hour of Emerson come yet?
Alcott, long before writing Little Women, in love with her master, played under his window, dreaming to be the Bettina of the new American Goethe. But that’s another story of the inexhaustible Concord’s treasure.
Novels create worlds in which we are allowed to live as long as our reading lasts. Some of those worlds linger in our psyches delighting us for a while to fade later. Others, instead, remain embedded in our memory and, as a lived experience they borrow its emotional quality. Literature and language are not innocent at the time of expressing a precise community and its values. Even in translation, Little Women didn’t fail its purpose of educating young girls in the values of freedom and self reliance. In the middle of twentieth century, Latin American families had no strategies to deal with wild rebellious girls wanting to be themselves. Louisa May Alcott did more for women in the world and on behalf of the American dream than any politician would do in the century to come.
Without a name, because the word Concord was not mentioned and less its historical role in the United States independence, this New England Victorian town became my inner promised land. I had no immigration fancies and no endearing links as later in life; I barely knew at that time about the existence of the United States as a different country than mine. I only craved for the love, solidarity and freedom which blossomed in that household ruled by an open minded mother. In the same emotional trip toward freedom, I took Jo as a role model, without knowing that writing was my call. She inspired me because she was boyish and temperamental. She loved books as I did. I was a reader; she was a writer, someone enabled to dream and to give dreams an entity through words. Jo was not my exclusive mirror of a future to come: many other Latin American women writers have reported the same enlightening experience.
Not only mothers and their education in freedom which nurtured literary minds were different in the magic town of Concord. Trees had red leaves during the fall and houses had garrets where Jo would hide to write. Yellow paper would become later in my mind another colored distinct mark of New England. Wannabe women writers used yellow legal pads to scribble her stories or letters, as in Daddy Long Legs, by Jean Webster, a novel in which the potential of women was also exalted in the scenery of the typical up state New York college.
If red leaves and yellow paper were a luscious novelty and garrets the place where dreams were dreamt in houses with a nook for each need, Concord had more to offer. I was not the only one to have benefited of the experience of a Concord family in the immediate pre and post Civil War era. The Argentine President Sarmiento, elected in 1868 while he was the Argentine ambassador to the United States, had close ties to Concord. Horace Mann and later his widow, Mary Mann, introduced Sarmiento in the knowledge of the American educational system and helped him to adapt it to Argentina. Sarmiento hired a set of brave and free American women school teachers and started in Argentina a public education program which was a national pride for almost a century and a model for other Latin American countries. Sarmiento had also met Emerson in Concord, and if none of the meeting was recorded, at least one of Emerson’s reflections remained as a mysterious legacy: “There is a great education in the snow.” Often quoted, the famous sentence still distils the quaint image of New England winters.
There is snow in the first Christmas at the beginning of Little Women; snow while Laurie, the boy next door, plays with a sled; and more snow freezing romantic love as a pledge until the end of childhood. New England’s nature became part of my memories. I listed the snow as well as the woods and flowers, narrow rivers and ponds I would later find in Thoreau and Emerson, with the unmistakable feeling that I had been there before.
Little Women, as the top of the iceberg of the rich Concord based literature, introduced the past century Latin American children into a larger American project. Little Women as the other Alcott’s stories, An Old Fashioned Girl, Little Men, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, and Jo’s Boys represented not only a program on how to build strong family ties but on how to organize an equally strong community around common ideals of freedom. Alcott’s education was also on what I didn’t know at the time was a constitutional right, the pursuit of happiness. Women were also invited to the feast and that permission made all the difference for girls like me. My childhood days were also Evita’s days, and I can assure many of her dreams were also based in these embedded images of American happiness as seen in the movies and cartoons. The model of Californian chalets she picked up to build her neighborhoods and towns for the poor comes out straight from a later version of the American Dream started in Concord. Little Women grew up with the new generations of women and, the lesson on freedom being learnt, nobody reads Alcott any more.
Concord’s light seems to have dimmed while a heavy anti-American feeling spreads these days everywhere in the world, including my country. Below the world’s anger for a supposed American imperialism invading Iraq lies the powerful envy for a country which has succeed to be the richest in the world. The one which on top of that has not sacrificed happiness to wealth but, on the contrary, created wealth to allow that happiness. Hippies rediscovered Thoreau in the 60’s, when the goal was to be free from repression and to reach a fulfilled life according to nature. Isn’t it time for the skeptic world in search for a better life to revisit good old literary Concord? The body has been taken care. Does now humankind dream of spiritual happiness? Has the new hour of Emerson come yet?
Alcott, long before writing Little Women, in love with her master, played under his window, dreaming to be the Bettina of the new American Goethe. But that’s another story of the inexhaustible Concord’s treasure.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
THE NAFTA ISSUE: WHY MC CAIN RINGS THE RIGHT AMERICAN BELL
John Mc Cain asked his Democratic rivals to stop the “NAFTA-bashing,” and criticized them for their intentions to renegotiate a treaty they wrongly blame for the loss of jobs. Mc Cain has consistently remarked during his campaign that the trade treaty has been hugely beneficial for the three countries involved. He also explained the loss of jobs as the price to be paid for the transition from a manufacture society to one based on intellectual work. An enemy of protectionism and a critic of traditional American isolationism, Mc Cain is well placed to reshape the United States image in Latin America as well as in the rest of the world, creating a business atmosphere at a time of great worries about the global economy.
No matter how charming Senator Obama’s looks are for Latin Americans always ready to adore someone who defies the WASP standard or how attractive is the idea of a woman ruling the first country in the world, people beyond the border still care more about economy and how American elections will influence their lives. McCain’s news on free trade look good: United States’ protectionism is always feared by Latin America, which as a region still balances between the acceptance and the rejection of the FTAA (Free Trade Area for the Americas), that bigger NAFTA which will eventually involve all the countries in the Americas. McCain’s campaign hasn’t linked yet the Americas free trade to the immigration problem, but he might be thinking about it. The idea of bringing the United States to Latin Americans seems a better choice than hosting millions of illegal aspirants to the US citizenship. Free trade has been often rejected by some of the American unions and blue collar workers because it’s seen as an unfair export of manufactures, without considering that in the specific case of Latin America, business lie more in exporting services and know how than factories. The lack of appropriate infrastructure in public services, from water to government organization, opens a monumental chance for American investment and businesses. With a continental free trade agreement, American companies, while securing United States influence in the region, could make great profits there where European companies have advantaged them till now. It is not so much as in the past about helping Latin America, as Democrats propose, but about creating a frame that would tie countries in productivity and security issues.
During the past week, a border incident between Colombia and Ecuador triggered a threat of war, of which Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, took quickly advantage, leading one of his usual calls for a continental union against the United States. John Mc Cain’s response, while not addressing directly the war, called in the Congress to approve a pending free trade with Colombia. If security matters, it’s not all about Al Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq: Latin America, if abandoned, can represent a source of conflicts and a potential major trouble. Democratic candidates opposing trade agreements resign at the same time commerce as the best defense weapon of democracies in an unstable world. Mc Cain has pointed out this contradiction in candidates who are opposed ideologically to war but who refuse to create the conditions to prevent it.
To change NAFTA-bashing into NAFTA-pride will probably become, in the weeks to come, a main Republican campaign’s argument for economy growth and security. At the same time, the Republican candidate’s good relationship with Latin America, which gets him the favor of many Latino voters, could start now to represent also a great advantage to business makers. Reluctant and ironic Republicans could take then a second look on Juan McCain, who not only has Latino friends but is far ahead from trade blind Democrats in what concerns the greatness and security of America.
No matter how charming Senator Obama’s looks are for Latin Americans always ready to adore someone who defies the WASP standard or how attractive is the idea of a woman ruling the first country in the world, people beyond the border still care more about economy and how American elections will influence their lives. McCain’s news on free trade look good: United States’ protectionism is always feared by Latin America, which as a region still balances between the acceptance and the rejection of the FTAA (Free Trade Area for the Americas), that bigger NAFTA which will eventually involve all the countries in the Americas. McCain’s campaign hasn’t linked yet the Americas free trade to the immigration problem, but he might be thinking about it. The idea of bringing the United States to Latin Americans seems a better choice than hosting millions of illegal aspirants to the US citizenship. Free trade has been often rejected by some of the American unions and blue collar workers because it’s seen as an unfair export of manufactures, without considering that in the specific case of Latin America, business lie more in exporting services and know how than factories. The lack of appropriate infrastructure in public services, from water to government organization, opens a monumental chance for American investment and businesses. With a continental free trade agreement, American companies, while securing United States influence in the region, could make great profits there where European companies have advantaged them till now. It is not so much as in the past about helping Latin America, as Democrats propose, but about creating a frame that would tie countries in productivity and security issues.
During the past week, a border incident between Colombia and Ecuador triggered a threat of war, of which Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, took quickly advantage, leading one of his usual calls for a continental union against the United States. John Mc Cain’s response, while not addressing directly the war, called in the Congress to approve a pending free trade with Colombia. If security matters, it’s not all about Al Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq: Latin America, if abandoned, can represent a source of conflicts and a potential major trouble. Democratic candidates opposing trade agreements resign at the same time commerce as the best defense weapon of democracies in an unstable world. Mc Cain has pointed out this contradiction in candidates who are opposed ideologically to war but who refuse to create the conditions to prevent it.
To change NAFTA-bashing into NAFTA-pride will probably become, in the weeks to come, a main Republican campaign’s argument for economy growth and security. At the same time, the Republican candidate’s good relationship with Latin America, which gets him the favor of many Latino voters, could start now to represent also a great advantage to business makers. Reluctant and ironic Republicans could take then a second look on Juan McCain, who not only has Latino friends but is far ahead from trade blind Democrats in what concerns the greatness and security of America.
Friday, February 15, 2008
CONTINENTAL EYES
We all see with the eyes of a nation: for most of us, the nation where we were born and which speaks the language we speak and that we learned from our parents. What happens if we are introduced into the challenge of a new multinational superstructure? Will our eyes change? How much are we expected to change? These questions, which have been often debated in the United States as a country with a large and diverse immigration, become again pertinent these days. The project of a continental union revivified by the attempts of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, requires from the United States a strong political and cultural response. Chavez promotes a dangerous Latin American alliance against the United States and to successfully counteract this project of aggression with a project of union, the United States needs to see Latin America not only with its American eyes but with its continental eyes.
Both North Americans and South Americans are challenged to travel the space which goes from their nations, language, and culture to the common continental space with, at least, two main languages and cultures at stake. This political journey was not invented by Chavez. Three very different American presidents, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, with different degrees of enthusiasm, stated in the recent past that Latin America and the United States were finally compatible and potential partners. They launched the ambitious Free Trade Area for the Americas, a program which has been quietly making its way defying the unfriendly environment of leftist Latin American governments and the US priorities after 9/11.
Beyond the traditional Latin American complaint about North American capitalism and its attributed imperialistic intentions, the lack of a clear program for economic growth appears to be the main problem which divides the United States from Latin America. What we, Americans and Latin Americans, face now is the challenge to finding a common ground that allows us to have hopes in the future and dream with what the Europeans already have: a continental union. Our American Union, which now would follow the model of the European Union, has been however the early dream of North American patriots as James Monroe and of South American patriots as the Argentine José de San Martín and the Venezuelan Simón Bolivar. Imagined during the days in which American countries were still reaching their independence and building their identities, the American union was never concreted. The fact that most of the colonies were gaining their independence from the losing and decadent Spanish Empire and that the United States was emerging as the brightest child of the dominant British Empire created a lasting cultural web of resentment and hatred. The common American-ness was crushed against the differences in language, culture and religion opposing Anglos and Hispanics. This opposition configures a category which continues to nurture speeches on both sides. Samuel Huntington is as scared of what Hispanics may do to the United States if let as Hugo Chavez and his followers from the supposed imperialistic United States threat.
American presidential candidates in their current campaign to reach the White House seldom talk about Latin America. When they do, it’s always about immigration issues: how to better protect the borders to prevent illegal Latin American immigration and how to deal with legal and illegal Latinos in the United States. They are not still thinking, and less talking, about what could actually stop immigration, which is bringing the U.S. organization and services to Latin America. The Free Trade Area has been widely resisted as the NAFTA was because it is wrongly depicted as an export of jobs, when it should be considered as an export of know how and services. A continental commercial union wouldn’t promote a loss of jobs in the United States because an ambitious and realistic American Union is not about exporting factories to Latin American countries but about to helping them in their development, selling knowledge. The United States can export and sell its know how, its engineers’ and technicians work and its financial and organizational services to communities which lack of everything, from water to highways, from credit banks to efficient federal organizations. Latin American countries in return can help to create a bigger common market for both United States and American products and thus enlarge commerce with the rest of the world. The Americas, duly organized, have the potential to become the biggest common market in the world.
This project of union can be seen as Chavez fears, as a form of imperialism, or as what it really is, the most progressive immediate idea to boost both the United States and Latin American economies. Those who already have in place their continental eyes can see in this possible union the continental essay of global rules for growth and wealth.
Both North Americans and South Americans are challenged to travel the space which goes from their nations, language, and culture to the common continental space with, at least, two main languages and cultures at stake. This political journey was not invented by Chavez. Three very different American presidents, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, with different degrees of enthusiasm, stated in the recent past that Latin America and the United States were finally compatible and potential partners. They launched the ambitious Free Trade Area for the Americas, a program which has been quietly making its way defying the unfriendly environment of leftist Latin American governments and the US priorities after 9/11.
Beyond the traditional Latin American complaint about North American capitalism and its attributed imperialistic intentions, the lack of a clear program for economic growth appears to be the main problem which divides the United States from Latin America. What we, Americans and Latin Americans, face now is the challenge to finding a common ground that allows us to have hopes in the future and dream with what the Europeans already have: a continental union. Our American Union, which now would follow the model of the European Union, has been however the early dream of North American patriots as James Monroe and of South American patriots as the Argentine José de San Martín and the Venezuelan Simón Bolivar. Imagined during the days in which American countries were still reaching their independence and building their identities, the American union was never concreted. The fact that most of the colonies were gaining their independence from the losing and decadent Spanish Empire and that the United States was emerging as the brightest child of the dominant British Empire created a lasting cultural web of resentment and hatred. The common American-ness was crushed against the differences in language, culture and religion opposing Anglos and Hispanics. This opposition configures a category which continues to nurture speeches on both sides. Samuel Huntington is as scared of what Hispanics may do to the United States if let as Hugo Chavez and his followers from the supposed imperialistic United States threat.
American presidential candidates in their current campaign to reach the White House seldom talk about Latin America. When they do, it’s always about immigration issues: how to better protect the borders to prevent illegal Latin American immigration and how to deal with legal and illegal Latinos in the United States. They are not still thinking, and less talking, about what could actually stop immigration, which is bringing the U.S. organization and services to Latin America. The Free Trade Area has been widely resisted as the NAFTA was because it is wrongly depicted as an export of jobs, when it should be considered as an export of know how and services. A continental commercial union wouldn’t promote a loss of jobs in the United States because an ambitious and realistic American Union is not about exporting factories to Latin American countries but about to helping them in their development, selling knowledge. The United States can export and sell its know how, its engineers’ and technicians work and its financial and organizational services to communities which lack of everything, from water to highways, from credit banks to efficient federal organizations. Latin American countries in return can help to create a bigger common market for both United States and American products and thus enlarge commerce with the rest of the world. The Americas, duly organized, have the potential to become the biggest common market in the world.
This project of union can be seen as Chavez fears, as a form of imperialism, or as what it really is, the most progressive immediate idea to boost both the United States and Latin American economies. Those who already have in place their continental eyes can see in this possible union the continental essay of global rules for growth and wealth.
Monday, February 04, 2008
CONTINENTAL HUMOR: THE SIZE OF THE AMERICAN PENIS
“Do you want enlarge your penis up to 4 inches?” No matter I am a woman who has longtime ago overcome that envy which made Freud rant about gender and accepted that I have no penis at all, small or long, but an equally serving vagina, I still receive dozens, if not hundreds of spam a week with the call of the mermaid. No, sir, I don’t want to enlarge a penis I don’t have and you would better trim your spam listings before sending them out. Such an amount of messages around the lines of “Imagine being able to put on inches permanently, safely, and quickly,” “Tired of a small cock?”, “It's normal to be ashamed if you have a small schlong, but change that around today” must have a better clientele than non envious women. The language is clearly and unmistakably American and whether I am still wondering if this type of spam is written by angry females or by rogues of any sex who know the nail they have to hit to sell pills, devices, or herbs or to get the click that will confirm a name in a spam list, I have no doubts they address American men.
The problem is that besides being a woman, I am a foreigner, and this spam is reaching not only Americans, who may laugh at it, but the whole world. In Beijing, Rome, El Cairo, Sidney or Buenos Aires, where I live, people envious of the American superpower also laugh. Thanks to spam, they are now into the long time kept secret of what is behind so much war. Freud helps them to deduct that a small penis calls for great empires. How come Homeland Security hasn’t noticed this leak in the American border? How come the Department of State didn’t detect the actual reason beneath the loss of American influence in the planet? How could ever America get her reputation back when spam addressed to American men yell in the world’s email boxes: “The problem is that you have a small one.”
America the beautiful, land of the free and home of the brave, confesses to the world her impotence to comply with the constitutional mandate of bed happiness. Is this true? Or is this spam written in anger by Arabs, by Chavez’ Venezuelan followers or by Castro’s Cubans, the usual suspects, all making a projection of their own lack? Will an atomic threat substitute later the spam in what is now only a more subtle dirty war? A spam which boasts “I carry a bazooka in my pants walking around” may be giving a clue that, after all, penis spam could really belong to some kind of unstated military problem.
But not all is about war in these uncertain times in which the economy takes the lead in presidential debates. The math and the grammar police combined could take a look at the funny “9 inches in your pennies will make you the world’s 8th wonder to women.” If 4 inches are usually promised and 9 inches is the final length, that means the average American penis is 5 inches long which doesn’t look that bad and wouldn't be a reason for so much war. On the other side, if the plural of penis is pennies, Freud might have something to add to the slip: power comes also from money and not just from building empires.
I can better understand the other series of penis spam, referred to Viagra and what spam calls the “Whopping Dick,” because it’s about age and decay. All males in the world will sooner or later have to deal with this, but the persistence in making of it a priority adds to the worries about size and, there we go again, the penis shines as an unavoidable American obsession. Written in American slang most of the times, this spam excels in distribution and seems to have no competitors: there is little or none spam in other languages concerning other foreign nationals. In the rest of the world, men have something else in mind but their penises.
Could it be that all this tragedy finally comes from the also often mentioned eternal dissatisfaction of American women? A careful reading of spam suggests that this uncomfortable revelation of too small American penises could have been triggered by the overwhelming demands of those bitches who always want more. To rescue male readers from despair and hopelessness, spam advices: “Do not worry! You have unique possibility to solve this problem. At present you can enlarge your male aggregate size.” In spam, promises soar, “You will be a king of bed sure enough,” while the actual problem is faced: “Don't let girls laugh at your small manhood, when you can add inches so easily.” But it's America and it all comes about reaching a Hollywood ending to this penis affair: “Bigger, better, mightier means getting laid more.” No matter what the world may think about the penis quandaries of American men or the fury of desperate wives, the problem can always be solved and men and women live happily ever after. Where there is a will, there is a way.
The problem is that besides being a woman, I am a foreigner, and this spam is reaching not only Americans, who may laugh at it, but the whole world. In Beijing, Rome, El Cairo, Sidney or Buenos Aires, where I live, people envious of the American superpower also laugh. Thanks to spam, they are now into the long time kept secret of what is behind so much war. Freud helps them to deduct that a small penis calls for great empires. How come Homeland Security hasn’t noticed this leak in the American border? How come the Department of State didn’t detect the actual reason beneath the loss of American influence in the planet? How could ever America get her reputation back when spam addressed to American men yell in the world’s email boxes: “The problem is that you have a small one.”
America the beautiful, land of the free and home of the brave, confesses to the world her impotence to comply with the constitutional mandate of bed happiness. Is this true? Or is this spam written in anger by Arabs, by Chavez’ Venezuelan followers or by Castro’s Cubans, the usual suspects, all making a projection of their own lack? Will an atomic threat substitute later the spam in what is now only a more subtle dirty war? A spam which boasts “I carry a bazooka in my pants walking around” may be giving a clue that, after all, penis spam could really belong to some kind of unstated military problem.
But not all is about war in these uncertain times in which the economy takes the lead in presidential debates. The math and the grammar police combined could take a look at the funny “9 inches in your pennies will make you the world’s 8th wonder to women.” If 4 inches are usually promised and 9 inches is the final length, that means the average American penis is 5 inches long which doesn’t look that bad and wouldn't be a reason for so much war. On the other side, if the plural of penis is pennies, Freud might have something to add to the slip: power comes also from money and not just from building empires.
I can better understand the other series of penis spam, referred to Viagra and what spam calls the “Whopping Dick,” because it’s about age and decay. All males in the world will sooner or later have to deal with this, but the persistence in making of it a priority adds to the worries about size and, there we go again, the penis shines as an unavoidable American obsession. Written in American slang most of the times, this spam excels in distribution and seems to have no competitors: there is little or none spam in other languages concerning other foreign nationals. In the rest of the world, men have something else in mind but their penises.
Could it be that all this tragedy finally comes from the also often mentioned eternal dissatisfaction of American women? A careful reading of spam suggests that this uncomfortable revelation of too small American penises could have been triggered by the overwhelming demands of those bitches who always want more. To rescue male readers from despair and hopelessness, spam advices: “Do not worry! You have unique possibility to solve this problem. At present you can enlarge your male aggregate size.” In spam, promises soar, “You will be a king of bed sure enough,” while the actual problem is faced: “Don't let girls laugh at your small manhood, when you can add inches so easily.” But it's America and it all comes about reaching a Hollywood ending to this penis affair: “Bigger, better, mightier means getting laid more.” No matter what the world may think about the penis quandaries of American men or the fury of desperate wives, the problem can always be solved and men and women live happily ever after. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
CONTINENTAL HUMOR: ONE TO TANGO
Who says you need two to tango? Sometimes a solo tango can be the right solution for the senior dormant lover you are. You have been alone for a while; you don’t know where to start. Tango is your solution; you begin alone, you will end in a couple. All you need is a video or a book showing the steps and a good collection of CD. There where a partner should stand, you acknowledge the void, embracing the air. Dance! Tango will work its own magic. One step, one step, and one step, one step in a four beat, and you are done with rhythm. Walk behind, then again, walk behind, then again, walk behind, turn to the right, then to the left, and start all over again while Osvaldo Fresedo and his Orchestra play “Tinta Roja” that is to say, “red ink.” Tangoes are written with the color of passion and if you feel your body has been sleeping for too long, awake it! You are a song away of being reborn as a lover.
Who says age makes of us sleepy grand parents with no lust or interest in sex? We may feel discouraged, rather, as some teen agers do, because we don’t have a companion with whom to share the rest of our unlived passion. We are widows, widowers, or divorced and we doubt we will find at sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety, someone to share our dreams of naked togetherness. More on the tender side than on the aggressive approach, we shy at the time of confronting a possible partner. Tango eases everything and whether you practice it on your own before getting to the ball room or you are decided to engage in a tango lesson’s group, you will discover that the sensuous music and the calculated choreography have been created to allow a whole sensorial awakening. Emotional and sexual cobwebs are magically brushed away by the languishing though steep rhythm, and legs, hips and spine are sent into an unforgettable trip. Practicing tango on your own, surrendering to the music will get you there where you want: to the arms of who has been waiting you for a long time, dancing in the dark, as you do. Solo players are doomed to meet.
Tango is not an easy dance, but its difficulty is made out from the same walls people face at the time of being bodily connected. It’s true that in the classical tango the man leads and the woman is led, as in a macho sex game, where the woman is a chosen object to please and to get pleasure from. However, the primitive tango was a two men dance, and not at all a homosexual dance, but, once again, a macho dance where the body skills to interconnect were tried between men at a time women were not as easy available for such a trade. A solo tango is then the supreme nirvana of consciousness about how far our body may go if we let it follow the music. It goes as far as it can, because of the power of the music and the strict choreography where the torso remains quiet while the hips, the legs and the lower part of the spine do the job. Never mind if you have slow or clumsy feet, they will follow the pulse of your lower chakra. As always, sex commands.
Not only Osvaldo Fresedo climaxes to magic, also Anibal Troilo and his incredible “bandoneón” –that sort of small accordion which gives tango its unforgettable sound- or the bright Orchestra of Mariano Mores – tango’s Glen Miller’s equivalent- can make you peak to glory. There is a musical treasure to discover in the orchestras of the 40’s and 50’s and exploring it can give you an additional reward if you enjoy the refined quality of an achieved national rhythm. Dance! Dare! Tango is the only dance in which being one calls for two and succeeds in the appeal.
After your solo dance is over, not because your passion is exhausted but because you just want to get a rest, you can relay on Astor Piazzolla and his romantic tango with touches of classical Vivaldi. He has recorded the four seasons as lived in the most bewitched southern city. Try his “Verano Porteño,” the port of Buenos Aires' summer. You cannot dance under his spell, but your soul will. Then, you will reach perfection: a soul mate might be on his way.
Who says age makes of us sleepy grand parents with no lust or interest in sex? We may feel discouraged, rather, as some teen agers do, because we don’t have a companion with whom to share the rest of our unlived passion. We are widows, widowers, or divorced and we doubt we will find at sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety, someone to share our dreams of naked togetherness. More on the tender side than on the aggressive approach, we shy at the time of confronting a possible partner. Tango eases everything and whether you practice it on your own before getting to the ball room or you are decided to engage in a tango lesson’s group, you will discover that the sensuous music and the calculated choreography have been created to allow a whole sensorial awakening. Emotional and sexual cobwebs are magically brushed away by the languishing though steep rhythm, and legs, hips and spine are sent into an unforgettable trip. Practicing tango on your own, surrendering to the music will get you there where you want: to the arms of who has been waiting you for a long time, dancing in the dark, as you do. Solo players are doomed to meet.
Tango is not an easy dance, but its difficulty is made out from the same walls people face at the time of being bodily connected. It’s true that in the classical tango the man leads and the woman is led, as in a macho sex game, where the woman is a chosen object to please and to get pleasure from. However, the primitive tango was a two men dance, and not at all a homosexual dance, but, once again, a macho dance where the body skills to interconnect were tried between men at a time women were not as easy available for such a trade. A solo tango is then the supreme nirvana of consciousness about how far our body may go if we let it follow the music. It goes as far as it can, because of the power of the music and the strict choreography where the torso remains quiet while the hips, the legs and the lower part of the spine do the job. Never mind if you have slow or clumsy feet, they will follow the pulse of your lower chakra. As always, sex commands.
Not only Osvaldo Fresedo climaxes to magic, also Anibal Troilo and his incredible “bandoneón” –that sort of small accordion which gives tango its unforgettable sound- or the bright Orchestra of Mariano Mores – tango’s Glen Miller’s equivalent- can make you peak to glory. There is a musical treasure to discover in the orchestras of the 40’s and 50’s and exploring it can give you an additional reward if you enjoy the refined quality of an achieved national rhythm. Dance! Dare! Tango is the only dance in which being one calls for two and succeeds in the appeal.
After your solo dance is over, not because your passion is exhausted but because you just want to get a rest, you can relay on Astor Piazzolla and his romantic tango with touches of classical Vivaldi. He has recorded the four seasons as lived in the most bewitched southern city. Try his “Verano Porteño,” the port of Buenos Aires' summer. You cannot dance under his spell, but your soul will. Then, you will reach perfection: a soul mate might be on his way.
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