Autobiography – Page 2 – education and deconstruction.com

My Race

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The Book of the Week is “My Race, A Jewish Girl Growing Up Under Apartheid in South Africa” by Lorraine Lotzof Abramson, published in 2010.

Born in March 1946, the author grew up in Orange Free State in South Africa. Her ancestors were originally from Latvia. Many other fair-skinned people (hereinafter called “whites”) were descended from British settlers. The Afrikaners (descended from Dutch settlers) were the country’s ruling majority. They imposed apartheid beginning in 1948. They interpreted the Christian Bible in a way that depicted dark-skinned Africans (called Africans; hereinafter called “blacks” but the derogatory term is Kaffirs) as servants. All white families had sufficient wealth to employ at least one (black) servant.

The black population way outnumbered that of the white. The Afrikaners felt extreme pressure to oppress the blacks unmercifully, lest they revolt against any and all whites. The Jews were thus largely left alone. The author was the only Jew in her elementary school. She showed natural running ability at an early age, and after collecting a bunch of victories in footraces, she became a source of local pride for the community. So she was tolerated, even though she was Jewish.

In August 1961, the author was chosen to represent her homeland of South Africa in the Maccabi Games, a competition for Jews held in Israel. She met athletes of all different nationalities, including surprisingly, an Indian Jew. Under apartheid in South Africa, simply having a conversation with an Indian (or any non-fair-skinned person) was a crime, in public or in private.

The South African government used a divide-and-conquer strategy, outlawing assembly of ten or more individuals of dark-skinned tribes. The government fomented hatred of one tribe against another. Signs saying, “Whites Only” or “Non-Whites” were posted in all public places to indicate who was allowed where and what they could do. Whites would be arrested for entering a place bearing the “Non-Whites” sign. The police kept photos of protest-marchers (troublemakers– including whites). A person of any skin color who criticized the government would be punished.

In 1991, after serving 27 years in prison, (black political activist) Nelson Mandela was elected leader of South Africa. The whites were deathly afraid the blacks would wreak revenge against all whites. Mandela was forgiving, and didn’t hold a grudge against his oppressors. But he could’ve– as happened in previous decades when various other African countries achieved independence and a black person became the top leader. The South African whites were relieved as hell.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s life and times and places.

A Refugee’s American Dream

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The Book of the Week is “A Refugee’s American Dream, From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service” by Leth Oun with Joe Samuel Starnes, published in 2023. The book appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index.

Leth was born in October 1966 in northwestern Cambodia. He lived in a Buddhist neighborhood of seven households; it was communal, and living conditions were primitive. But his parents believed in education. Leth’s school was a half-hour’s walking distance. He began attending at six years old. The most excitement the peasants had was provided by a neighbor in the wider community. That wealthy family had a home entertainment system consisting of a screen and projector that showed Charlie Chaplin films with French subtitles.

Up until spring 1975, when extreme political turmoil turned his life upside down, Leth was allowed to bring his pet dog with him to see Cambodian and Chinese movies in a theater in Battambang City, near his home village. When the war came to his area, he saw “helicopters shooting fireballs from the sky, trees burning and exploding, trying to kill the Khmer Rouge soldiers in hiding.”

The Khmer Rouge guerrillas committed unspeakable atrocities, dubbed the “Killing Fields” by Western historians, but there was much was more to it than simply torturing and killing people in fields. Westerners who call mass deaths in modern times the “Killing Fields” are just as ignorant about world history as those who call certain leaders “Hitler” when they have no clue what they’re talking about.

Most Khmer Rouge foot soldiers were teenage boys toting AK-47’s. They were bossy and sadistic, like Nazis. The difference was, though, that Cambodia’s new dictator, Pol Pot, took lessons from Stalin’s and Mao Tse Tung’s Communist playbooks through: redistributing property to the government; turning the entire common population into peasant-farmers; and punishing everyone who had previously engaged in capitalism-related activities. They imposed an anti-intellectual godless regime that demonized all things Western. Most of his life, the author’s father had been (not by choice) in the Cambodian military, so he was doomed to be taken away and killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Obviously, the author lived to tell his tale, but he barely survived. At one point, he lived in a refugee camp, which he described thusly: “More huts were built in the dirt of the sprawling community surrounded by barbed wire beneath the mountain. The lines for food and water grew longer and slower. The latrines grew more crowded and smelled terrible.”

Read the book to learn many more details of the fate of the author and his family.

The Longest Race

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The Book of the Week is “The Longest Race, Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team” by Kara Goucher with Mary Pilon, published in 2023.

Born in 1978, the author grew up in New Jersey and the Duluth, Minnesota area. Goucher became a professional runner. Like many of her fellow athletes, the author– who experienced an early childhood trauma– found at a young age that competing in footraces is cathartic.

Goucher focused on her training and reaching the finish-line first, rather than getting all worked up about the numerous stressful situations she endured in everyday living. However, she rationalized away some of the wrongs committed against her, because speaking out against them would ruin her career, her marriage, her friendships, etc.

In the United States, the way runners go professional is to convince a corporate, non-governmental sponsor to pay them to race. Goucher and her husband both signed contracts with Nike, the monster-sized corporation best known for making athletic shoes. The company provided her and her fellow runners in her working group with the best, cutting-edge scientifically and technologically advanced resources for winning races.

However, the Gouchers’ status with Nike was as independent contractors, so they had less legal recourse than that of employees with regard to any illegal goings-on in their field of work. Their coach and immediate boss was the celebrity runner Alberto Salazar. In the single-digit 2000’s, he led the “Oregon Project” which was an attempt to help Americans win races again around the world; their victories had been woefully plummeting for years.

Salazar did boost Kara’s confidence and helped her perform better than she thought she could. But, his behavior and many of his training practices were inappropriate and illegal. He and his colleagues (an alleged psychotherapist and medical doctor) wielded a lot of power over the Gouchers, who owed their careers to their sponsor. Salazar’s underlings hewed to his training methods through fear and force. “He [Salazar] got testy when called out for having a third drink. I could only guess how he would react to being called out about sexual harassment.”

As a female, Kara had to deal with Nike’s double standard of suspending her pay when she ran an insufficient number of races in a specified time period pursuant to her contract. Male runners were punished this way when they got caught in doping scandals or had injuries. She was subject to those same conditions, but she couldn’t race because she was pregnant. In connection with exploring her career options, Kara wrote, “… I found myself again and again in rooms of male executives explaining women’s running to me. There seemed to be more interest in how I would look on a poster than in how the sport could evolve.”

Fighting “City Hall” in so many different areas of life is difficult. Anyone who attempted to do so in professional running in the single-digit 2000’s would have to deal with Nike. It held a near-monopoly with overwhelming power and influence over regulators. Whistleblowers would suffer doxing and death threats.

BUT, it is an age-old truism that when more and more courageous people come forward with firsthand information about wrongdoing by an institution or a particularly powerful individual– the less the harm that will be done in the future because the collective mood of the community will shift against the wrongdoer. Eventually.

Read the book to learn lots of additional details of the Gouchers’ experiences in their professional running careers– their trials, tribulations and triumphs.

We Were the Future

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The Book of the Week is “We Were the Future, A Memoir of the Kibbutz” by Yael Neeman, published in 2016. Readers might argue that the author and her cohorts were raised in a cult– brainwashed from birth. The kibbutz movement strove for 100% socialism– the economic system in which all the people (not the State) collectively owned everything; and collectively governed themselves.

In 1947, the total population of kibbutzim as a proportion of Israel’s (Jewish) population reached a high of 7%. It waned after Israel achieved sovereignty in 1948. The first half of the 1950’s saw global historical events (the trials of: Prague [1952], the Doctors in the U.S.S.R. and the Rosenbergs in the U.S. [both 1953]) that were jarring to Jews. The kibbutz movement split over ideological disagreements, especially after Stalin died in 1953 and his crimes were revealed in 1956. Adults around the author held zero discussions about this recent history.

Neeman was born in 1960 in Kibbutz Yehiam (founded in 1946) in Western Galilee near the border with Lebanon. Her kibbutz was a branch of Hashomer Hatzair (meaning “Young Guard”), the movement’s umbrella organization that began in 1913. Their motto was, “For Zionism, Socialism and Brotherhood Amongst Nations.” Her children’s group consisted of eight boys and eight girls, who did everything together, every day. She was raised among them by women who collectively took care of the kibbutz’s children grouped by age; she visited with her biological parents, but didn’t live with them in the same building.

The lifestyle encompassed a number of major ideas:

“Family and education in the rest of the industrial world were considered bourgeois institutions.”
“Everyone knew after all, that work [on the kibbutz] was more important than school, more important than anything.”
Egalitarianism for all the people was key– all decisions were made by committee.

Contradictorily:

There was a hierarchical division of labor– upper and lower. The former consisted of high-level positions in the fields and factories; held by the founders of the kibbutz, the (mostly Hungarian) First of May group. The latter consisted of low-skilled, dead-end jobs such as peeling potatoes.
The kibbutz undertook a number of enterprises through the years, including a banana “plantation” which was the most “profitable.” [these words with nuanced meanings were translated from Hebrew, but even so, these were capitalist endeavors.]

Kids whose behavior was troublesome were exiled from the kibbutz, and sent to a “special institution.” At twelve years old, all the conforming kids began to attend what amounted to boarding school, located off the kibbutz campus. They had previously received an eclectic education of hands-on instruction on a myriad of topics. Beginning in adolescence, they were allowed to shape their own education, or lack thereof.

Currently, analogous experiments are underway in American education in which adolescents are placed in front of computer screens with no teachers. Educrats and profiteers expect the software to teach them. At that age, most kids have neither the judgment nor the discipline to acquire the knowledge and skills required for becoming mature, responsible adults who can financially support themselves.

Kibbutzniks were afforded too much freedom and not enough guidance and supervision within their tiny, limited community in their early childhood. So they had a rude awakening when they were permitted (on rare occasions) to see how other kids in the rest of the world lived.

One other interesting factoid: Neeman wrote, “In our biological home, we [she and her three siblings] were already allowed to smoke on Purim when we were in the first grade.”

Read the book to learn about a boatload of other ways Neeman’s upbringing was extremely unconventional due to her fledgling homeland’s exceptionalism.

Shanghai Acrobat

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The Book of the Week is “Shanghai Acrobat, The True Story of Courage and Perseverance from Revolutionary China” by Jingjing Xue, translated by Bo Ai, published in 2021.

Born in 1947 in Zhejiang Province in China, the author was sent to live at an orphanage when he was two years old. He never did find out exactly why, as his biological parents were alive. Anyway, the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe recruited him when he was nine years old. Other members of the group were as old as fourteen. He happened to possess the right temperament to endure its rigorous training (that included corporal punishment) and get good at balancing on his hands in various precarious positions.

There were daily academic lessons, too, and a lot of political ideology thrown in. The instructors constantly emphasized the teachings of Mao Tse Tung, and bragged about what a prosperous, wonderful country they lived in. Mao took the calculated risk of allowing performers and athletes to travel outside China where they might learn about other peoples’ lifestyles and defect– so that he could show off his own people’s greatness.

By the late 1950’s, the author was traveling and performing with the Troupe. In 1960, they went to cities controlled by the Soviets, and ironically, to African countries (such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea and Morocco) whose native peoples were starting to throw off their colonialist yokes.

In the early 1960s, owing a ginormous monetary debt to the Soviets and not wanting to pay it, China decided the Soviets were wrong to stomp on the memory of the great leader Stalin (who had died in 1953 and whose crimes were revealed a few years later); Mao theatrically broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviets.

In 1967, Mao capriciously imposed his new twisted logic (a different set of ideas from that of his previous campaign)– the belief that the lowest economic class (the workers, the peasant-tenants) needed to fight the higher economic classes (the bosses and landlords)– because capitalistic activities were anathema. There were a few occasions in which the author was yelled at for saying the wrong things to some non-Chinese people, even though he thought his comments would jive with Mao’s teachings.

As part of the new campaign (called the Cultural Revolution, begun in 1965) to rid China of the dissidents of the moment– performing acrobatics was out of fashion. The radicals loyal to Mao policed the Troupe, finally disbanded it, and psychologically and physically tortured the director in public self-criticism meetings. The author’s acrobatic career was (temporarily, though he didn’t know it at the time) over. He was sent to the countryside for “reeducation.”

With 20/20 hindsight, the author wrote, “To those of us who had been through the Cultural Revolution, the Watergate political scandal was nothing. We couldn’t understand how the American people could force Nixon to resign for ‘peanuts.’ ” It is unclear what kind of propaganda the author and his contemporaries were fed to come to that conclusion.

For, they might have known nothing of Nixon’s real war crimes. But even if Nixon had been innocent of war crimes, he and his underlings still committed election crimes, and worst of all, violated his numerous enemies’ civil rights– evil actions that were considered against the law in the United States. The last fifty years have seen a bit more moderation in China’s political leadership. And radicalism in the United States.

Human nature is such that there has been some convergence (!) between China’s and the United States’ ideologies in:

surveillance of citizens
incarceration of citizens
economics
education, and
other areas of life.

It’s all in the propaganda fed to the people.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s life and times, and his fate.

Newsroom Confidential / An Atheist in the FOXhole

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The First Book of the Week is “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life” by Margaret Sullivan, published in 2022.

The author survived a decades-long career as a journalist and editor. Ironically, her writing was slightly less than perfect. The word “being” was used awkwardly in the middle of sentences throughout the book. Also, she spent a bunch of pages describing the problems with “anonymous sources” but her (presumably nonfiction) book lacked a detailed list of Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index (!) She did say some of her information was taken from articles she wrote for her employers. This, from a seasoned journalist.

Born in 1957, Sullivan grew up in Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo, in northwestern New York State. By her early thirties, she was supervising six journalists in the politics and government division of the Buffalo Evening News newspaper. In autumn 2012, as an ombudsman, she began penning articles critiquing her employer, the New York Times. Her position was that of watchdog– she helped with quality control of its product.

The author described her take on how journalism has changed over the decades with respect to truth, trust and objectivity. As is well known, technology now allows the world to communicate at the speed of light. Especially during political campaigns, many journalists have begun to behave the same way as political workers: workaholics who act like extremely self-absorbed, socially manipulative teenagers who think they’re starring in their own reality show; and they are– it’s called social media.

They feel obligated to interact with their readers by inviting their comments and responding to them; the author included. Inevitably, haters express their opinions offensively and meanly. Everyone wastes untold amounts of time dealing with them, instead of changing the world for the better.

AND, people in the media and political realms aren’t as influential as they’d like to believe they are. Ordinary Americans who don’t work in the media or politics, cannot possibly affix their eyes to all of the infinite writings, photos and videos “out there” in entertainment land 24/7. Some have to work, and others are actually engaged in other activities.

Anyway, in 2017, as a columnist for the Washington Post, the author considered herself an “independent-minded journalist” but came to the rude awakening that, when she asked people from all-walks-of-life about politics, she could no longer find common ground with them on basic issues.

Although the author discussed the legal issues of “anonymous sources” and “equal time” she didn’t cite any legal cases. She did write that in three different instances, media outlets courageously chose to give more time to the truth than to falsity in their 2020 election coverage– by not giving equal time to people who were screaming voter fraud and that Trump had won the election. She hopes there will be more media space devoted to the truth in the future. Good luck with that, all.

Read the book to learn a boatload more about the author’s career trials, tribulations and triumphs, and her recommendations for helping to reverse the current awful trends in journalism so as to save modern civilization.

The Second Book of the Week is “An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media” by Joe Muto, published in 2013.

The author was born in early 1982 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His first job out of college was at Fox News. He detailed the working conditions there from summer 2004 into spring 2012. In October 2004, a story broke about a sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill O’Reilly. The main source of evidence consisted of O’Reilly’s voice on audio recordings.

Thereafter, Fox News gave its employees sensitivity training in order to stave off more lawsuits. The two lawyers teaching the classes said that the Fox bosses could legally tell on-air talent what to wear– even mini-skirts and strappy, cleavage-revealing blouses(!)– because they had a right to creatively control their “product.”

As time went on, the author’s employer’s product became more and more inflammatory, cringeworthy, and offensive. As is well known, Fox has toned down its rhetoric due to lawsuits. The number of parties who have the clout and money to sue have finally reached critical mass on the sexual harassment and defamation fronts.

In connection therewith, in the last decade, several obnoxious public figures have disappeared from the American-influence scene. This has help foster a kinder social environment. Nevertheless, hate-spewers and laws favoring them wax and wane in history.

Too, in the last few decades, the entertainment industry has seen a trend of lazy (or untalented) creators, evinced by a boatload of unnecessarily juvenile, expletive-laden, disgusting content. Controversy over free speech has also been ignited by people on each extreme: those who feel they should have the right to say anything they want, and those who take offense at everything that is said, with accusations of discrimination or inappropriateness.

Anyway, read the book to learn about the author’s employment experiences and his fate at the time of the book’s writing.

As I Saw It

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“We in the government were at a disadvantage, having to keep our feet grounded in the realities of that conflict while exposed to sharp, uninformed, and often partisan attack.”

-Dean Rusk, secretary of state, regarding the Korean War

Unsurprisingly, there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Book of the Week is “As I Saw It” by Dean Rusk as told to Richard Rusk, published in 1990.

Born in February 1909 in a northern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, Rusk had four siblings. They all pitched in on the family farm. The Farmer’s Almanac told his father when to plant crops pursuant to the phases of the moon. Every American household had the Sears Roebuck catalog, which was used for toilet paper. The school curriculum propagandized on the Confederacy, convincing young minds that there was nothing wrong with slavery.

During WWII, FDR was preoccupied with an overwhelming number of serious political issues. Rusk commented that, for whatever reason, the president failed to address the issue of pushing for the elimination of colonialism, especially in India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and Indochina. But Rusk did say the United States used the Indians for cheap labor in transportation, supplies and infrastructure in China and along the Burma road, so it was in its best strategic interest to maintain the status quo.

“Reflecting on my experiences in government, I think we tended then (late 1940’s)– and now– to exaggerate the necessity to take action. Given time, many problems work themselves out or disappear.” Yes, civilized nations of the world began to take a dim view of colonialism, but it would not have worked itself out on its own. However, as is well known, countless lives were sacrificed in colonialism’s disappearance.

Rusk favored sending American troops to Korea in summer 1950 because he claimed that it was hard to gauge the intentions of the leaders of the U.S.S.R., North Korea and China. But then, that implies that America’s spies were incompetent. Perhaps that is why America got into so many foreign policy scrapes through the decades of Rusk’s career.

On the other hand, the Soviets didn’t correctly assess America’s national-security situation and attitude immediately following WWII, either. For, “If Stalin had invested ten years in genuine peaceful coexistence, he would have faced a disarmed and isolationist America. But instead, he embarked upon adventures which forced the United States to rearm and play a greater role in world affairs.”

It’s impossible to say how much better off the U.S. would have been economically if it had engaged in long-term detente with the Soviets. But, first off– there would have been minimal military spending and few needless deaths and ruined lives from war. And some American president would eventually see the advantages of trading with the rest of the world, including the Communists.

Although Rusk was pro-war most of the time, he believed in basic freedoms, such as the right not to be spied on. Rusk was vague on the time frame of an anecdote he related, but the upshot was that he forced an investigator to resign for claiming under oath that the investigator hadn’t illegally surveilled a State Department employee by bugging his phone and going through his trash, when in fact, the investigator had.

Anyway, read the book to learn Rusk’s take on many other historical incidents in American foreign policy, and his life and times.

Speaking of lying under oath, here’s a little ditty explaining Trump’s situation.

UGLY LIES

(Dirty Dancing version) sung to the tune of “Hungry Eyes” with apologies to Eric Carmen.

Biden got him indicted.
Agencies were on, Hillary’s side.
They violated his privi-lege, he cries.
He’s innocent tonight.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with these

ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes.

He held the records so you heard, him out.
They were his records, is what it’s all about.
He’s innocent tonight.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with these

ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes. He’s got
ugly lies.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with the
ugly lies.

His act is no surprise.
He needs you to see,
he’s never, ever guilty.

He’s got ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes. He’s got
ugly lies.

Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with the
ugly lies.
His act is no surprise.
With his ugly lies.
Ugly. Ugly lies.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with his
ugly lies…

Congo Sole – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Congo Sole, How a Once Barefoot Refugee Delivered HOPE, FAITH, and 20,000 PAIRS OF SHOES” by Emmanuel Ntibonera with Drew W. Menard, published in 2021. This slim paperback volume included no index, and its writing contained occasional grammatical errors throughout. But it was suspenseful.

The oldest of nine surviving children, the author was born in April 1989. He grew up in the city of Bukavu near the Rwandan border, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereinafter referred to as “Congo”). Living conditions were primitive. Life-threatening conditions abounded, including malaria, poisonous snakes, bacteria-laden waterways (used for drinking), and jiggers (which burrow under the skin and reproduce; if not removed, they eventually prompt amputation of digits and limbs, but are easily prevented from doing any harm if people wear shoes!).

When the first Congo civil war started in 1996, the family fled on foot many miles to the author’s grandfather’s village in the mountains of Eastern Congo. They did hard manual labor– growing cassava, tending to pigs, and herding cows and goats. If they shot a rabbit with a bow and arrow, they ate it. When the author was about eight years old, he, his father (who was a preacher and small-businessman) and two younger brothers walked back to Bukavu. His father’s dry-goods store had been looted and trashed.

It had been only a few years after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Child-soldiers and refugees were still pouring into the Congo, and clashing with rival tribes. In 1997, the regime change in the Congo led to yet more atrocities, including raping of females of all ages. The author and his younger brother had somehow been warned not to be lured into joining the ranks of the child-soldiers. They ran away when recruiters came to call and offered sweets.

While nearly starving to death and suffering many hardships, the author’s family truly believed that petitionary prayer worked for them. At least, people’s outlook improves with petitionary prayer, as it has a placebo effect. People who have a bible that’s falling apart, usually aren’t.

However, one burning question that can’t be answered is: What is the percentage of people for whom petitionary prayer failed (who are unable to triumphantly say that it worked for them) because they died?

Read the book to learn: how the family survived, and about many more details on how the author came to start a foundation (hint: “…for the Congolese children, a pair of shoes was a treasure, not a fleeting status symbol to be discarded for the next trend. It wasn’t about a brand, logo, or label there; it was about protection, vitality. About hope.”)

Settle For More

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The Book of the Week is “Settle For More” by Megyn Kelly, published in 2016.

Born in November 1970, Kelly was raised Catholic in the suburbs of Syracuse and Albany in New York State. She conveyed a few simple principles on life. One is, “The only place ‘success’ comes before ‘work’ is in the dictionary.”

The late, great college basketball coach John Wooden said one should be worried about one’s character, not one’s reputation. The true test of one’s character is: how you treat people who can do nothing for you. Like so many others, Kelly got caught up in worrying about her reputation when Trump and his followers smeared and lied about her.

Anyway, Kelly wrote that there occurred an egregious breach of journalistic ethics during 2016, leading up to election day. It was this: some idiot-box interviewers of Donald Trump told him prior to airtime, the critical things they would be saying about him, so they would appear to be “fair and balanced” in their reporting. Trump knew to behave himself and didn’t react with hostility to those questions or comments. Scripting and rehearsals are the new unethical normal in “journalism” nowadays.

Unsurprisingly, Kelly was the victim of a misogynistic Tweet by Trump. He knew this Tweet would become the subject of a 2015 post-debate news story, rather than her debate questions and his non-answers. He is, after all, the master manipulator of distracting messaging. His distractions are analogous to the scene shown during the closing credits of the movie Animal House: While a parade is passing through the college town, a frat boy says to a guy, “Look at my thumb.” The guy does and the frat boy sucker-punches him and says, “Gee, you’re dumb!” the same way Trump makes outrageously offensive comments for shock value, and then watches the fireworks.

In 2016, Kelly was forced to confront an ethical dilemma in connection with sexual harassment in her workplace– Fox News. Having succeeded in two male-dominated fields, she advised her female readers to get some advice on how they sound, and the clothing and makeup they wear so that they will be taken seriously by their male coworkers and bosses.

That said, it is unclear whether Kelly had the authority to choose the photo (in which she is wearing skimpy clothing) appearing on the front cover of the hardcover version of her book. The question is, would a male TV-news-show host wear a sexy shirt in the cover-photo of his book? Resounding no.

Kelly’s choice in that photo could have been an act of rebellion, or an act of naivete and poor self-awareness, on her part. With it, she hurt her cause of telling female readers to behave in ways that even the playing field with their male counterparts. If Kelly couldn’t control the photo on the cover, one might suspect her publisher was engaging in political retaliation.

Nevertheless, read the book to learn about how Kelly became super-successful as an attorney and as a TV “news” anchor, and how she was also able to have a family life in her time and place in the United States, despite the fact that her society gives males advantages over females.

We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders

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The Book of the Week is “We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, A Memoir of Love and Resistance” by Linda Sarsour, published in 2020.

First off, the author explained that jihad means “to strive.” When using this word, the vast majority of people who practice the religion of Islam are not extremists and therefore do not take it to mean “religious war.”

Of course, propagandists (haters, predatory stalkers, bullies, doxers and their ilk) twist a word such as “jihad” so that all Muslims are branded as extremists and the one-word description most often used in the United States– “terrorists.” The propagandists know how to whip up a frenzy of fear, and get satisfaction from: seeing their victims sustain psychological damage, as much as egging on their followers who do physical damage.

Anyway, the author, the oldest of seven siblings of Palestinian extraction, was born in May 1980 in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York State. She grew up in the nearby Sunset Park section– the multi-ethnic, immigrant community in which “…neighbors looked out for each other and disciplined one another’s children…”

At the author’s high school, John Jay, there were only three guidance counselors for more than three thousand students, but every day, tens of police officers arrested students whose punishments were outsized, for the minor offenses committed. After 9/11, across the country, numerous culturally and linguistically disadvantaged young rule-breakers (who were targeted because they were Muslim) were detained and deported without due process. Other Muslims left of their own accord, as they saw that the United States was becoming a hostile residential environment for them.

The author helped found an organization that assisted Islamic women and children in New York City. She and her colleagues practiced local political activism and community organizing. They realized they needed to ally with other minority groups to acquire sufficient power to change education policies for their own group. They also knew they needed to become partisan, so they formed the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, before the 2013 mayoral election.

In December 2014, the author and her fellow activists protested the handling of two different incidents the previous summer; the deaths of two (non-Caucasian) men resulting from law enforcement’s extremely inappropriate conduct in Staten Island in New York State, and in Ferguson, Missouri. The protestors got together with pop cultural influencers and social justice advocates including Jay-Z and Lebron James to stage a “die-in” at a New York Nets basketball game in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This, on a night when there was high attendance because the royal couple William and Kate were there.

Read the book to learn many other details about the author’s: family, and her trials and tribulations as a Muslim and an activist.