Two works that will make you feel bad about being a member of the human race: 1) Hunger, the story of IRA leader Bobby Sands' hunger strike to gain political concessions for Irish prisoners-- though the movie is a bit one sided and hagiographic in its portrayal of the Irish prisoners in The Maze . . . it forgets to mention that the IRA bombs were often blowing up innocent people, but that is another story for another film . . . and I'm sure that will be an even worse indictment of humanity 2) the first three essays of The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2009 (you can guess the tone from their titles . . . Faustian Economics, The Ethics of Climate Change, and Is Google Making Us Stupid?).
I saw Hunger, and I'd agree with your assessment -- we're supposed to gloss over the fact that they're murderers who want to be treated like POW's. The Bobby Sands and entire IRA debate is one with empassioned stances from both sides (understatement), and I'd rather not get into it here . . . if only because of the 1/1,000,000 chance that Cap Noonan happens to find his way upon a computer, learn that there's an Internet, somehow finds your blog, and reads this.
ReplyDeleteyou know, i actually thought about that while writing the sentence . . .
ReplyDeleteDo you know Alina Balasa? Her sister is a senior - tennis player? Anyway, their father staged a hunger strike to get their family out of Romania when Alina was three. He went 24 days, I think, before they were granted leave.
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