"The Other"

Have you guys seen that new Toyota commericial about the Tahoma's new truck bed that mimiks an aid/relief commercial. The woman cries at the end and says "Won't you help?" I don't think I have EVER been more offended by a commercial.

There are many things in the world that allow suffering to go on unnoticed. To quote Lord of War "It has been said that evil previals when good men fail to act. They should say, Evil Prevails." But perhaps at the core of the permission we in the Western world tacitly grant to oppressors world wide is the desensitization we experience toward the oppression. Part o desenseitization, is dehumanization. We dehumanize the pain or the victim and eventually, it is no longer a moral quandry, it's just life. For example, before slavery in this country could've been permitted, Blacks had to be dehumanized in the eyes of our citizenry. We don't enslave humans, we enslave "monsters", "Negros", "Niggers" and "Coloreds." We don't abort babies, we abort "Fetuses". The same is true for issues like hunger and oppression: we develop a sense of the Other which prevents us from having to deal with the issue on a moral level. Toyota is doing just this with this dispicable commercial.

There is nothing more terrible than to capitalize on the horror and pain of others by telling them it's not real, or if it is, it's not a big deal. How dare Toyota tell those in Ethiopa starving because of the locusts plague that their suffering is funny and even worth a paradoy commericial. How dare they say that IJM raising money for children kinapped in the Middle East and trafficked to the U.A.E. to be camel jockeys is funny. How can they say that even the victims of hurricane Katrina [the one million displaced] portrayed in Red Cross Commercials like the ones Toyota is paroding are not deserving of respect for their tragedy? The horrors of the human condition are NOT laughing matters.