If you made it through Jonathan Harr's lengthy New Yorker article (it's 9,900 words) about the aid workers in Chad helping with Darfur's refugees, perhaps you noticed the part where the reporter from one of the industry's most respected magazines started doling out his own cash to people he was covering? CONTINUED »
At right is Pastor Thomas Muthee, an insane religious zealot from Kenya who claims to hunt witches. Cute, right? But Muthee isn't just any madman, he's one of vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin's favorites, as she believes he used his magical powers to help her become governor of Alaska. Seriously!
Vanity Fair's July 2007 Africa issue, guest-edited by Bono, was Graydon Carter's best-selling issue last year. Why so successful? Our money's on the twenty different covers Annie Leibovitz shot for the issue, letting customers scoop up at least a few of the covers to display on their Design Within Reach coffee tables. [min]
"Here’s the good thing about a trend in sex tourism," writes our racially/ethnically diverse younger sibling, Stereohyped.
"It doesn’t entail rich white men traveling to third world countries to prey on underaged girls and boys." (With the possible exception of Jeffrey "I Devirginized The Virgin Islands" Epstein.) Meanwhile, it does, however, "entail rich white women traveling to places like Kenya to live out their Mandingo fantasies with 20-something men who will only have sex with them in exchange for new sneakers and free meals."
Disturbing? On many, many levels. In fact, despite the alarming AIDS epidemic, local Kenyans estimate that approximately 20% of "single female visitors" are trolling the beaches for sex. So the next time an undersexed, overprivileged WASP prissily informs you she's heading to Kenya, bear in mind that there's at least a 1 in 5 chance she's looking to open up a whole lot more than her pocketbook once she gets there.
Have you heard of the Rastas? They're a "band of dreadlocked outlaws in shiny track suits and Laker’s jerseys" wreaking havoc in the Congo. Sounds almost laughable, until you realize they're responsible for kick-starting a rape epidemic, as well as some of the most horrific acts of murder, mutilation and torture in the history of mankind. Seriously. [Stereohyped]
Now that Radar magazine's outsourced publicity guru Drew Kerr has all but closed up shop at Four Corners, the struggling indie mag is fending for itself in the PR department. And it shows, like in this email blast.
In case you missed it, Radar's sendup of Vanity Fair's weighty Africa covers is not up! For example, did you know the budget of a single Vanity Fair Oscar party could buy enough mosquito netting and insecticide to help prevent 400,000 Africans from contracting malaria?
Oh good! We'll not go look at it.
Good news for former CNN South Africa correspondent Jeff Koinage: He's going to be known for something other than his sexual affairs! The bad news: The "something other" is another scandal. CONTINUED »
There are the Peter Braunstein variety of date rape journalists, and there are the Jeff Koinange types. How to tell the two apart? For starters, one wears a fireman costume.
Koinage is (or, was) a CNN correspondent based in Johannesburg, who has been given the nickname "the Kenyan date rape journalist" after his on-the-job behavior (setting up interviews) veered into the territory of inappropriate (harassing interview subjects). As Richard Prince's Journal-isms reports, there are even websites about the whole matter, which include emails sent to CNN International prez Jim Walton from a woman on the receiving end of Koinage's attention.
Fast foward to now-ish, and Koinage (a former NBC News producer and ABC staffer) is no longer employed at CNN. The network isn't talking about the matter, even though it was just two weeks ago that they were broadcasting his mug on Anderson Cooper 360.
While our heart goes out to any victims of Koinage's alleged crimes, all this begs the question: Can you just imagine what this is going to do for struggling foreign bureaus? CONTINUED »
As we were the first to tell you about last month, Oprah and "special friend" Gayle King spent the holidays in Johannesburg, South Africa, opening the talk show queen's much-hyped school for some 150 disadvantaged girls. The final price tag to put together Oprah-style education? $40 million.
And it seems at least a good portion of those dollars went to the "five-day, star-studded celebration with 200 of her celebrity pals." Though the likes of Diane Sawyer, Chris Tucker, India.Arie, Sidney Poitier, Quincy Jones, Tina Turner, and Spike Lee had to pay their own airfare, once there they were treated to a five-star hotel stay, deluxe safari, cigar bar, gift bag, and stuffed guinea fowl.
Which is such an appropriate way of saying, "Sucks to be in poverty, but look, new pencils!"
Exclusive
How is Oprah spending her Christmas holiday? Not at the side of sometimes-partner Steadman Graham in Chicago, but rather, we hear, she's heading to South Africa with "special friend" Gayle King. Over the holiday season they'll be heading there to open Oprah's boarding school for young girls.
And good news, gals! Just a few weeks ago, South Africa legalized gay marriage. You know, in case you know any same-sex twosome looking for the opportunity to seal their bond. We're just sayin'.
It wasn't that Angelina Jolie necessarily needed a comeback – though, after two Tomb Raiders, who wouldn't? – that she headed to Africa to spread goodwill and lip gloss across her ample lips, but she does provide a decent case study on how to win over America. Granted, Madonna didn't read the lesson plan and fucked up her African efforts, but that doesn't mean the continent is souring with celebrities.
Take Michael Jackson. Either Rwanda's publicity department in foolishly attaching itself to the pop star or Jacko is actually forecasting what he'll be doing more than a week ahead of time.
“Michael Jackson will be here in June 2007, he confirmed this,” Kije Mugisha, the Deputy Director General of the Rwandan bureau of information told Africa News. She said that Jackson was interested in children’s education, health care and the media, but didn’t say how much the cash-strapped performer had committed.
“Michael Jackson is eager to know how many hospitals are in place in Rwanda and how he can help in improving people’s health here,” Kije Muisha, who also doubles as the director general of Rwanda television, said, adding that the star had also promised to help the national television. “He promised to do what he can afford to do. It could be in terms of equipment or any other assistance. We shall get to know much of that when he is here in June next year.”
Back up here. Lovely that he's interested in checking in the country's healthcare and knowing where the hospital beds of children are located (ahem), but he's promised to "help the national television?" Clearly we're the only ones who saw his World Music Awards "performance," because if that's helping television, we're helping the Internet.
With Madonna set to tape an Oprah segment today – and the show scheduled to air tomorrow – industry mouths have been conjuring up exactly two scenarios about how Madge is going to frame this whole Malawian adoption. To be clear, when we say "industry mouths," we generally mean "us. Last night at dinner." Madonna will have to go one of two ways: 1) Proclaim that she's given up her attempts to adopt 1-year-old David Banda, after the boy's father has come out publicly against the adoption – which he previously supported, under the pretense that he didn't understand its full implications (i.e. that Madonna needed a trophy African baby) – and likely writing a cheque for the boy's full education and food for the rest of his life; or 2) Proclaim she's moving ahead with the adoption, screwing over the father, and embarking on a publicity nightmare tear where she'll need to defend her decision to every press outlet and West Village drag queen.
And then there's Option 3, which we didn't tell you about initially because there never would've been an item. Option 3 sees Madonna merging the two previous scenarios, adopting both the boy and his father, moving them in to her London estate, and then trotting them out on stage whenever she, or Guy Richie, have a project to promote. Take that, Tom Cruise.
So what if it took Angelina Jolie flirting with Anderson Cooper to get CNN interested in covering Africa again? That is, "covering" Africa, as in spending more than 12 seconds for a Darfur V/O. The cable net's Eye on Africa week-long series kicks off on Sunday, and CNN's talking heads will have you know this is a "landmark" moment in television news.
"The media often gets criticised for not covering Africa. At CNN, we have a global reach and it goes to show that we do spend time covering the nation," said Amanpour.
That's right: Christiane Amanpour demands that you best recognize CNN's devotion to the world's most ignored land mass. You know, Africa. Africa "the nation."
CNN takes a closer look at Africa [Michael Stuart, The Guardian]
