The following comment, left by someone using the name “a town without a newspaper,” struck me as particularly provocative.
Knowing that not everyone compulsively digs through the daily comments, I thought it deserved highlighting.
Let me know what you think.
Sep 14, 2011 at 10:00 am (Edit)
I once saw a presentation at the UHM for journalism majors. The adviser to the student newspaper Ka Leo explained that if a public official dodges a reporter, the reporter is to look up that official’s home residence address and that evening wait in the drive way to confront the official.
The whole room fell dead silent.
Finally, a young woman spoke out with trepidation, “Can we do that?”
The journalist got angry and started shouting at the students “You are reporters! That’s what reporters are supposed to do!”
I knew one of the student journalists, who was from the midwest but went to high school in Hawaii. She said that in the midwest, people are very nice and considerate in interpersonal matters. They are careful not to say anything that will hurt someone’s feelings. But in practical matters like business and politics, people in the midwest are very firmly but politely assertive and very open — and very hard working. I think that she had a real problem with the absence in Hawaii of that open and assertive side of life, but also with a kind of laid-back negligence and sloppiness.
There is a small-town lifestyle in Hawaii like in the midwestern US, but the geographic isolation amplifies the considerateness of the people, but also their timidity and complacency. They want to become journalists so they can report on restaurants and info tech and baby showers and all the creature comforts that comprise daily life within a very narrow horizon. In the 21st century, this is a path to doom.
The presentation that followed was from a successful journalist, a young guy from the Philippines whose father was a newspaper publisher. (He spoke perfect American English.) This reporter had moved to California during his college years and went to a community college with a decent student newspaper. He bought a Dodge Dart and lived in it, and survived on a diet of crackers and water. He constantly published and built up a big portfolio and got a job as a journalist when he graduated. You don’t need to go to Harvard, he said, but you need to constantly publish.
Again the room was dead silent.
The whole idea of moving to another country and living in an old car and on a diet of crackers and doing nothing but working was totally alien to the UH journalism majors. They probably mostly lived with their families and spent their weekends shopping or at the beach or working at a job (largely so they could go shopping).
The thing is, this guy was from a laid-back tropical island culture, and this guy had some major balls on him. There are people like that in all small-towns, people like Barack Obama, who end up at elite universities and in Hollywood and on Wall Street, etc.
Those kind of people deep down still remain attached emotionally to where they come from, and they keep the values of the culture they were raised in close to their hearts. That’s especially true of people from the midwest, from what I’ve seen.
But that’s not true of Hawaii. Over-achievers from Hawaii do not identify with Hawaii. They grow up alienated from the local culture and it mystifies them. They may visit Hawaii on occasion, but they avoid the people.
If there is a side of life involving openness and assertiveness and hard work and aspiration that is freakishly missing in Hawaii even for someone from rural Ohio who went to public high school in Hawaii, just imagine what Obama thinks of Hawaii.
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Hawaii is a clannish and patronage-based little culture. An amazing back story to all this is how fast many mainland people fall into step.
What is correct and “nice” is defined in upper middle classes and above. There is a quiet conformity into what is acceptable and who will be “granted” a future where everyone knows everyone…….
But don’t think for a minute this isn’t true of the eastern aristocracy and quietly enforced by journalists with big media who are prohibited by their handlers from coverage of stories that matter and need to be followed nationally.
But aren’t. Most leaders and politicians today are questioned as if they are judges at a quilting bee. Locally and nationally.
This is one of the more interesting observations echoed in other comments above, that the citizenry and journalists in the US have historically become more obsequious to authority and more passive and ignorant.
There was a lot of talk in the 1970s about the world becoming a ‘global village’ with new technology. Be careful what you ask for!
When Obama was elected President, a lot of local leaders in Hawaii said that this might be evidence that rather than Hawaii just becoming more like the mainland, the mainland was becoming more like Hawaii. (Of course, if Obama had a place in Hawaii, why would he leave in the first place?)
Well, this seems to be true in the worst possible sense. The US is becoming like Hawaii in some of the worst ways, perhaps.
Adding just one more comment to this overburdened comment section, I’d like to point out a New York Times article on how the Internet has had at least one unfortunate effect in small town America. The article is entitled “In Small Towns, Gossip Moves to the Web, and Turns Vicious”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=gossip%20internet%20small%20town&st=cse
In the big city, people survive by being critical of others and critical of themselves. They pride themselves on their discernment in food and clothes, for example. In a small town, even constructive criticism can be taken as an insult that will never be forgotten.
In other words, Hawaii is not so perfect, and in fact is pretty much par for the course in terms of small town life, neither better nor much worse.
What makes Hawaii unique is the fact that it’s population is almost 1.5 million people, and this way of thinking and acting persists as if it were a town with 150 or 1,500 people.
Well put, Kali.
On one hand, there likely are many other places that have a large population that relies on the problematic and lazy small-town approach. However, the “other places do this; why can’t we do it too?” excuse is full of holes. Hawaii needs to rise above its cultural problems, and not embrace excuses.
Again, well put.
None of that makes sense. Blogs cannot be overburdened by comments. The comments section on internet blogs have no quantity limitation. These big city mainland centric views are wholly irrelevant to Hawai’i regardless of the proliferation of ethnocentric haoles. “In the big city, people survive by being critical of others” “Hawaii has gotta act like the big city it is and get rid of its lazy small-town approach and cultural problems. ” jezuss keerist. Maybe stay in the mainland or New York and bitch about them. They like that there.