A conversation at the adults table (as imagined by the kids table)

[cstreit]

From The New Yorker

I. A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table



MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!

(Everybody laughs.)

MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.



II. A Day at UNICEF Headquarters, as I Imagined It in Third Grade



(UNICEF sits on a throne. He is wearing a cape and holding a sceptre. A servant enters, on his knees.)
UNICEF: Halloween is fast approaching! Have the third graders been given their little orange boxes?
SERVANT: Yes, your majesty!
UNICEF: Perfect. Did you tell them what the money was for?
SERVANT: No, sir, of course not! We just gave them the boxes and told them to collect for UNICEF. We said it was for “a good cause,” but we didn’t get any more specific than that.
UNICEF: Ha ha ha! Those fools! Soon I will have all the money in the world. For I am UNICEF, evil king of Halloween!
SERVANT: Sir . . . don’t you think you’ve stolen enough from the children? Maybe you should let them keep the money this year.
UNICEF: Never! The children shall toil forever to serve my greed!
(He tears open a little orange box full of coins and rubs them all over his fat stomach.)
UNICEF: Yes! Oh, yes!
SERVANT: Wait! Your majesty! Look at this! Our records indicate that there’s a kid out there—Simon—who’s planning to keep his UNICEF money this year.
UNICEF: What?! But what about my evil plans? I was going to give that money to the Russians so they could build a bomb!
SERVANT: (aside) I guess there’s still one hero left in this world.
UNICEF: No!

(He runs out of the castle, sobbing.)

SERVANT: Thank God Simon is keeping his UNICEF money.
SECOND SERVANT: Yes, it’s good that he’s keeping the money.
THIRD SERVANT: I agree. Simon is doing a good thing by keeping the money from the UNICEF box.
SERVANT: Then we’re all in agreement. Simon should keep the money.



III. How College Kids Imagine the United States Government



THE PRESENT DAY

—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.
—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?
—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.
—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?
- The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.
—Oh, right, I remember.
—You haven’t heard the half of it, Mr. President. The leader of the group says that if you don’t stop the war today they’re going to . . . to . . . I’m sorry, I can’t say it out loud. It’s just too terrifying.
—Say it, damn it! I’m the President!
—All right! If you don’t stop the war . . . they’re going to stop going to school for the remainder of the week.
—Send the troops home.
—But, Mr. President! Shouldn’t we talk about this?
—Send the troops home.



THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES

—Mr. President! Did you hear about Woodstock?
—Woo— Woodstock? What in God’s name is that?
—Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it.
—Oh, my God. They must really be serious about this whole thing.
—That’s not all. Some of them are threatening to join communes: places where they make their own clothing . . . and beat on drums.
—Stop the war.
—But, Mr. President!
—Stop all American wars!
—(sighs) Very well, sir. I’ll go tell the generals.
—Wow. It’s a good thing those kids decided to go hear music. ♦

[dhoward]

[bigchillcar]

lol.

[The Gaijin]

Funny stuff.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Great stuff.
And the thing about UNICEF doesn't come close to how scary and corrupt it actually is!

JP

[cashflyer]

Damn hippies.

[rammstein]

Hippies are probably the WORST thing to ever happen to the anti-war movement. In fact, they are the worst thing to ever happen to any cause they take on.

[red-beard]

"Hippies, hippies all around me. "

"They talk about saving the world but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad."

"Hippies, hippies all around me. "

[MRM]

Unicef is actually a pretty good charity. Their administrative cost to donation ratio is good and they get into a lot of places where others can't go. Don't confuse UNICEF with the rest of the UN.

[azasadny]

Very funny!!

[cashflyer]

UNICEF might look better if the United Nations had not made them partners with the UNFPA and some of the questionable tactics they use to "control population" in other countries.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Don't confuse UNICEF with a children's charity:

http://www.theinterim.com/1999/aug/20unicef.html

or

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1443

or This:

UNICEF Devolves
A dangerous leftward slide.

By Douglas Sylva

Radical feminism has a way of attaching itself to a healthy institution like a parasite. Such was the case with the Girl Scouts, the YWCA and, now, UNICEF (the U.N. Children's Fund). UNICEF is a particularly tragic example of this parasitical relationship because, in a sea of international organizations beholden to ideology, beset by incompetence, or bedeviled by corruption — or, usually, all three — UNICEF long remained close to its original mandate: saving the lives and improving the conditions of as many children as possible. And, because of this commitment, UNICEF has always been well rewarded by donor nations. The United States, UNICEF's largest donor, gives over $200 million to the organization every year.

If Danny Kaye — who served as a goodwill ambassador to UNICEF — were alive today, he would barely recognize the organization, as it now supports the killing of the world's most vulnerable children. UNICEF has endorsed, even helped to write, documents that call for the worldwide legalization of abortion. In a document on AIDS, UNICEF calls for "safe and legal abortion." In a document on maternal health, UNICEF calls for "safe services for pregnancy termination." In a document on the rights of refugees, UNICEF proclaims that the "regulation of fertility" is an essential right of refugee women. In the same document, UNICEF endorses the distribution of abortion-causing "emergency contraceptives" to these women.

And UNICEF's involvement with abortion doesn't end with words. According to the U.N. Population Fund, UNICEF has helped pay for a program run by the Population Council, the organization that holds the U.S. patent for the abortion pill RU-486. Goals of this UNICEF-funded program included "improving . . . reproductive health services" and "managing unwanted pregnancies." In U.N. parlance, "reproductive health services" has often included abortion, and "managing unwanted pregnancies" is a phrase routinely used by pro-abortion nongovernmental organizations as a euphemism for abortion.

UNICEF also funds a South African group called loveLife, whose website, as of the beginning of 2003, actively encouraged teenage girls to have abortions. The site described the abortion procedure as a "gentle suction," assured girls they could have abortions without telling their parents, and even provided them with the toll-free telephone number of Marie Stopes International abortion clinics.

UNICEF's current director, Carol Bellamy, first established a name for herself as a fervent feminist and pro-abortion state senator in New York. Twice, in 1974 and again in 1977, she voted against a "born-alive" protection act, legislation stipulating that if a baby somehow survived an abortion, the infant would be granted legal status as a human being and given medical treatment. Bellamy now sets the worldwide agenda for childcare.

UNICEF's record on contraceptives is no better. A UNICEF historian writes that, for most of its existence, "UNICEF was focusing its attention almost exclusively on trying to encourage behavioural change — abstinence or mono-partnership. . . . UNICEF did not want to devote the energies of its procurement system to becoming a leading world supplier of low-cost condoms (as it had vaccines)." But feminists managed to dispose of these quaint notions as successfully as they disposed of UNICEF's home-economics lessons.


DR. RUTH'S CHILDREN FUND
It is now official UNICEF policy to "promote and expand access to . . . sexual and reproductive health services, including access to condoms." This despite evidence from AIDS-ravaged Africa suggesting that abstinence training — UNICEF's original program — is the most effective means to combat the spread of the disease.

Among some high-ranking UNICEF officials, there is obvious distaste for traditional sexual morality and deep-seated attachment to condom-distribution programs. Urban Jonsson, UNICEF's regional director for eastern and southern Africa, told UNICEF's executive board in June 2003 that all discourse on the effectiveness of condoms should cease: "Let us stop the almost metaphysical debate on the pros and cons of the use of condoms. . . . Let us follow the decision of the government of Botswana to make condoms available and accessible for everybody, everywhere and at all times. . . . Abstinence is simply not a realistic option for most young people in the world today."


OPERATION FEMINIST TAKEOVER
Why has UNICEF changed in so many ways? Feminists saw UNICEF, with its dogged determination to focus on the needs of children, as a threat to their own agenda — so they targeted it for infiltration. According to UNICEF's former senior policy adviser on family and child welfare, Mary Racelis, "These pro-women activist groups" thought that UNICEF needed "to focus on a woman's own priorities . . . rather than decide for her that her children must come first. A woman had a right to be the person she wanted to be, and not be forced into carrying out male-defined stereotypes of who she was or ought to be." In the view of feminists, a mother who subsumed her own interests under the interests of her children — i.e., the type of person formerly elevated by UNICEF as an archetype — was now considered guilty of perpetuating "male-defined stereotypes." And so the question of UNICEF's purpose came into question. Should it remain "traditional" UNICEF — which included aid to children (with aid to mothers) — or "feminist" UNICEF: aid to children (with aid to mothers downplayed or redefined) plus newly formulated aid programs for women as autonomous individuals. The question, in other words, was whether "children must come first" at the U.N. Children's Fund.

The crisis at UNICEF peaked in the mid 1980s, when there was an open revolt against UNICEF's promotion of breastfeeding. Racelis writes, "Given the ongoing mother versus women struggle, the emphasis on breastfeeding appeared yet again to compartmentalize women around their maternal roles. Denunciations were rife: were women always to be portrayed in terms of their breasts and as the human equivalent of milking cows?"

Meanwhile, UNICEF also shifted its resources to focus disproportionately on girls. At UNICEF, a boy is just a boy, but a girl is always a "girl child." People who attend a UNICEF meeting for the first time often come away asking the same questions: "What, exactly, is a 'girl child'?" The girl child is a girl looked at through the prism of gender theory — and she is also the privileged child at UNICEF, receiving the bulk of UNICEF attention and programming.

The girl child was invented, quite explicitly, to placate feminists, who had become suspicious of programs for children. Racelis argues that "feminists were willing to suspend for the time being their insistence on women's empowerment and choices as the central programme focus in favor of promoting an equitable start in life for girls. . . . [There was a] converging enthusiasm of feminists and women and children advocates around the girl child."

And the girl child has never left UNICEF; under current executive director Carol Bellamy, the girl child has come to dominate UNICEF programming. UNICEF now seeks to boost girls' school enrollment — calling this endeavor its first priority — without any mention of boys' enrollment. In sub-Saharan Africa, where UNICEF claims that 27 percent of boys and 22 percent of girls attend school, only the girls' rate is worthy of attention, because it is lower than the boys' own dismal rate. At the same time, UNICEF admits that girls actually outnumber boys in school in such diverse nations as Columbia, Namibia, Spain, Lesotho, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Uruguay, Finland, Guyana, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom, and that "girls generally lead boys in Latin America and the Caribbean." Nevertheless, UNICEF has no program in any one of these places to address this inequality. When boys are disadvantaged, it simply seems that this disadvantage does not matter. This fact led the U.S. delegate at a recent UNICEF executive-board meeting to ask plaintively, "Why just girls?"

UNICEF still does an enormous amount of good. It will be deeply involved in helping the children of Afghanistan and Iraq; it still immunizes millions of children around the world. But that is no excuse for its mission to be compromised by ideology. Every dollar spent on loveLife or condoms is a dollar that could have been spent on food or basic medical supplies. It is time for the United States to exert its ample leverage and to demand reform. The sexualization and genderization of UNICEF, to use UNICEF's own term, has been bad for children, for both boys and girls.


I saw, firsthand, this type of attitude when I lived in Sub-Saharan Africa. Don't believe the rah-rah hype, and don't tell me I didn't see what I saw or know what I know.

JP

[Overpaid Slacker]

There may be some hope with Bellamy's long-overdue departure. But I'm of a wait-and-see attitude with the UN, which has far more sanctimony, inertia and indifference than it does competence. (I can't post the rest of this message w/o a subscription, but any of you with a Weekly Standard subscription could log in and copy/paste it):

Two years into Ann Veneman's tenure as head of the U.N. Children's Fund, it is clear that she is following in the footsteps of her predecessor, Carol Bellamy. Bellamy spent a decade reorienting the agency from its core mission--child survival--so that UNICEF could pursue the dual ideologies of children's rights and radical feminism.

Since the United States is UNICEF's largest funder, the selection of the executive director in theory reflects the priorities of the American president. Sure enough, the Clintons gave the children of the world a radical feminist lawyer and former New York politician in the person of Bellamy. When the Bush administration followed with Veneman, she was a former secretary of agriculture with no public record on anything more controversial than genetically modified corn.

Veneman's initial press conference as executive director was watched closely by both left and right, and the right--those seeking to return the agency to the no-nonsense approach that had saved millions of children's lives through massive immunization drives, oral rehydration therapy, and other basic medical interventions in the 1980s--came away hopeful. When asked if she would continue Bellamy's reproductive rights agenda for adolescents, Veneman responded, "I don't believe that these issues are relevant to the mission of UNICEF." She even quoted Mother Teresa.

But whatever her intentions, Veneman has failed to take the agency in a new direction. Its recently released annual report represents the triumph of Bellamy's legacy, so much so that the document isn't even about children. It's about women. The thumbnail account ...