Who Knew the Third World Was Blue?

It’s funny, but isn’t “third world” now deemed politically incorrect? By people who don’t really understand what it meant in the first place.

“Just as, in the nineteenth century, idealists had seen the oppressed proletariat as the repository of moral excellence…” Actually the comparison here is a little misleading. The view of non-western societies as being morally superior, ideal places goes way back before the 19th century, to Rousseau at least and it spawned one of the most nauseating traditions in Western political thought: Romanticism.

People who considered themselves progressive in the 19th and early 20th Centuries often held such views. The author of Porgy and Bess certainly thought there was something noble in having a poor black man sing “I got plenty of nothing. And nothing’s plenty for me.” Ah, those superior, unmaterialistic values! And how convenient to believe that poor black people actually prefer their poverty.

And it certainly isn’t dead yet. I quoted somewhere on Resurrection Central a vile Guardian journalist, in late middle age, who flew for a few days (for sooth!) to Cuba, observed black people in a socio-economic time warp, pronounced it good, then flew back to Britain to complain about all the prosperity he has to put up with.

It’s all the same point of view.

I believe “third world” was replaced by “developing country(ies)” years ago.

Then again, I was speaking to a twenty-something lawyer the other day, who refused to believe that China is a developing country. Apparently he thought that 1) the term was derogatory and 2) China certainly couldn’t be described as one.

Odd, because East Asian countries use these words descriptively without any sense of value judgment. Japan became a developed (or rather “advanced” in their terminology) country in the late 60s. South Korea is borderline (but really should be considered developed and will have much higher per-capita income by the end of the decade that the UK or even the US, probably) and China would like to become one sometime in the future.

Unless you’re a vital part of the Democratic Party’s majority. In which case you can be a former Klansman (Yes, Senator Byrd, we’re looking at you) or anything you damn well please.

BTW had you noticed that your idol Sarah P. has got into a tiff with Rahm Emanuel over the latter’s use of the term “fxxxing retard” to describe some lefty Democrats who were planning to run attack ads against conservative Democrats Emanuel helped to elect last time (Better not tell Sarah that you use the same language!)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl1101

But surely your favourite noun — Leftard– is a portmanteau word incorporating left and retard. Although you may prefer to think of it as a tautology.

Concerning what Emma Lazarus called “the wretched refuse” teeming on the shores of the third world, you might like to take a look at the Petrarchian response of poetess Ellin Anderson to the plaque which currently defaces the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She composed “Liberty Enlightens the People” as she was contemplating the recent atrocity at Fort Hood, ultimately made possible by the Immigration [Fling The Borders Wide Open] Reform Act of 1963, foisted upon your country by none other than the young Senator Edward Kennedy.

From my celestial vantage point, I was surprised to see someone in the early 21st Century, a period dominated by such literary [b]lights as inauguration laureate Maya Angelou, producing poetry exhibiting the kind of classical beauty which I thought had been outlawed shortly after my own death over a hundred years ago. You can find a, how do you call it, overactivechain to Madame Anderson’s rhyme spinningplace at the bottom of my own memorial page.