Damage control notwithstanding, the Pepsi chick’s speech did sound vaguely insulting:
What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. – the long middle finger – must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand … not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S. – the middle finger – sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally.
Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand – giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers – but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.
If America’s such a rotten place, why move here all the way from Madras? That being said, the reaction from Power Line, Hewitt, Malkin, and the rest of the Creationist Right is a bit extreme. High-born South Indian women are taught to be arrogant (Arundhati Roy) and don’t generally realize how others see them. Perhaps that’s the point, that America is like a high-born South Indian woman. I can see that.
Oh, geez, that was “offensive?” It was offensive only because of the absence of any actual obscenity.
That lady’s speech reeked of corprate-speak laced “daringness without being daring.”
Let’s face it, though, Bush has demaged our cred in the world (for which my portfolio is humbly grateful). Even a vague reference to that sets guys like Hewitt and Powerline off: if they had even one fortieth of the outrage at Abu Ghraib and Bagram that they display towards this multiculti corporate suit-in-a-dress, they might have a shred of cred themselves. But they don’t.
Some of us look at the rest of the world not because it’s important to care what others think of us (which is a weakness of that lady’s message here), but because it is feedback to guide us on a future course of action. That’s the real ponit. As well as “nobody should take seriously what any graduation speaker says anyway.”
For Chrissakes, the only graduation of mine I went to there was some chief engineer (also a woman oddly enough, back in ’79) from DuPont.
I remember my sister’s graduation, which had “Dr. Frank Field” an NBC weatherman at the time. Such wise words of wisdom were imparted that I bet nobody remembers it now, certainly not me.
So put this in the “tempest in a toy teapot” bin.
Can you picture somebody walking to a grad school class about how the world is like the fingers on a your hand? Kindergartners maybe, but at graduate school? She was asking for trouble giving such a lame speech.
Richard:
These type of people are supposed to say vapid crap that nobody remembers the next day- that’s their job.
Read ironically, Nooyi’s speech is a big f*ck you wait till you start work at a large corporation to those students who were dumb enough to attend without proper prior psychic medication, which should be mandatory for undergraduates.
Like I said, I’ve never seen a stirring graduation speech, and I’ve been to several of them.
Oh, yeah, now I remember another: Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave a speech once too, at my brother’s graduation. It was forgettable, too, obviously.
And I might add that Moynihan was himself apparently psychically medicated according to Irish tradition, too, which at least made the speech somewhat bearable.
So sorry you missed Billy Graham telling a class at Wellesley (not graduation) that ‘you can’t all be Marilyn Monroe’, assuming of course that we were there because we were ugly and couldn’t get husbands, I suppose, and getting hissed.
My daddy told the Wellesley admissions person that sis was there for an MRS degree. Those were the days.
High-born American women no slackers when it comes to arrogance either. Annie “Get Your Gun” Coulter a case in point.
Richard, I’m not sure daddies aren’t still saying the same thing today, are you? I still quote the line from the movie “Marty” starring Ernest Borgnine: “College women, one step from the street.” (Marty’s mother, referring to his girlfriend, a schoolteacher.)
kim, I have always been amazed by Indian-American ladies, had two friends who were equally fine, but had nothing to do with each other since they were from different societal backgrounds. One a professor, the other married to a doctor. Both accessible to other than their Indian acquaintances.
Any daddy who said that today would be pilloried, and if present trends continue – with fewer and fewer men going to college – not too far in the future admissions officers will say: “oh, it’s just darling that your boy wants to go to college. ..he’s a credit to his sex!”
Great, I’m looking forward to the scholarships to get the fellas in to balance admissions figures. Title IX programs for mens’ synchronized swimming. Male bonding field trips … oh, I’ve gone too far already. Never set my imagination off, you know.
For the class of ’66 there were dorms that tended toward academia (such as Tower and Claflin) and those that tended to be domestically inclined (the Quadrangle, e.g.)
I was in the really offbeat one, Munger. A best friend majored in Greek, hope they haven’t discontinued that, anyway. With elections there being in such a mess, it would probably be politically correct enough if the endowment wasn’t keeping up with expenses.
My niece is headed that way this fall, wonder what I should tell her. Except don’t fall in Paramecium Pond. Maybe they’ve got a great computer sciences department now?
Ruth, I was just responding to Richard’s post. Truth is, I have great respect for Arundhati Roy (have read all her books) & once met her mother, Mary Roy, when I lived in India. Mary is well-known & respected her her native state of Kerala both as an educator & social reformer. Many Indian women are extraordinary individuals, whether “high” or “low” born.
Arundhati’s novel is alleged to be good, but her political activism is poorly-informed and wrong-headed. The opening of the Indian economy to the rest of the world is the best thing that’s happened in that country since nationhood, and she wants to kill it and return to the quaint old days of the handloom and the Ambassador car. She’s a real crank who should not be taken seriously, and is not taken seriously by educated Indians.
kim, I wasn’t being critical. I thought it was unusual that two nice ladies, very fine people, were kept apart by caste considerations. Kind of sad. But we all loved them both.
I’ve read all of Roy’s books & interviews. I did not find a single instance where she suggests handlooms or Ambassador cars. Her facts & figures are always well documented. She is taken seriously by many educated Indians, including a Noble Prize winner in Economics.
She wrote one novel.
Thanks, Ruth.
I’m not sure, from the quote you used, how the speaker made the claim that the U.S. is a “rotten place.” Phrases such as “send the wrong message unintentionally” and “how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now” explicitly deal with perceptions, not realities.
Perhaps she didn’t suggest the US is a rotten place after all, and just used a lame analogy.
Richard, thinking again of your statement about Roy not being taken seriously by educated Indians, I have a fine essay by Ranjit Hoskote (journalist, poet, critic) titled “The Nonsense Mantras of Our Times”–it might be on the web, I don’t know. He expresses many of the same concerns as Roy.
Hoskote’s essays appear regularly in Indian newspapers & magazines.
As for Roy being regarded as a “crank”–almost every bookstore I visited in India carried her political books. Her published essays always result in vigorous debate, response, & lots of letters pro & con. Sounds like she’s taken pretty seriously to me.
I do, however, have an Indian acquaintance here in Austin who says he “hates” her. Former high-tech guy, he now makes his living involved in various pyramid schemes (now know by the less loaded name “compound recruiting”). Laid off? He won’t say.
There’s an Indian lady I work with who admires Roy. Her family lives in Mumbai & she speaks with dismay about the rise of Hindu fundamentalism/nationalism, the Shiv Sena, etc.
Was very pleased about results of last national election.
Do you have any Indian friends/collegues who’ve read Roy & regard her as a “crank”?
PS: Summer heat has hit Austin. Remember?
Harder on me as I get older. I kind of envy you up there.