Teach your cronies well
by Tom Sullivan
The U.S. press dutifully spent the last two days focused on why the White House did not send any high-level officials to join other world leaders at this weekend's Charlie Hebdo photo-op in Paris. Meanwhile, few registered that 2,000 people died in Nigeria over the weekend at the hands of Boko Haram. Twenty died and many more were injured when a maybe ten year-old suicide bomber attacked a Nigerian market. Matt Schiavenza of the Atlantic notes that the story appeared on page A8 of Saturday's New York Times. The massacre of civilians made page A6. Schiavenza explains why:
The main difference between France and Nigeria isn't that the public and the media care about one and not the other. It is, rather, that one country has an effective government and the other does not. The French may not be too fond of President Francois Hollande—his approval ratings last November had plunged to 12 percent—but he responded to his country's twin terror attacks with decisiveness. Not so Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan. Since assuming the presidency in 2010, Jonathan has done little to contain Boko Haram. The group emerged in 2002 and has consolidated control over an area larger than West Virginia. And it's gaining ground. Perversely, the seemingly routine nature of Nigeria's violence may have diminished the perception of its newsworthiness.
Jonathan's failure to confront Boko Haram, of course, is nothing new. Nigeria has long been cursed with a corrupt, ineffective government, one perennially unable to translate the country's vast oil wealth into broad-based prosperity. During his campaign for re-election—Nigerians go to the polls on February 14—Jonathan has vowed to tackle his country's problem with graft. ...
You know, one way to read that is, Goodluck Jonathan means to tackle his country's lack of broad-based prosperity with more graft—just as the corrupt, ineffective government the U.S. is cursed with has taught him by example. With the Republican congress and GOP-controlled state legislatures misleading the way, we'll all be saying "Je suis Nigeria" in no time.
The upside? Maybe the world press will start ignoring our mass killings.
(h/t Josh Holland)