Alan Duff: US ‘weird and contradictory’

Alan Duff: US ‘weird and contradictory’

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11703553

She’s turned the tables on near every woman who claimed a fling or affair with her – likable – husband. Perhaps that’s no different to a woman making a complaint to police saying she was raped in – let’s just name a few of numerous countries – India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, (forget Arab countries as no woman ever dares report rape) only to be charged herself with making false accusations, trying to destroy a good man’s reputation and often as not jailed for being the victim.

Americans are funny about sex. Bill’s moment caused a shrill outcry that still echoes today.

Yet JFK is admired, never admonished, for being a serial womaniser. Janet Jackson exposed a nipple on the Super Bowl final stage and the booing and bellowed outrage echoed round the world. Well, she is black.

The movie based on my first novel was deemed too violent for general screening in America. When almost every American-made movie has the obligatory dozen graphic murders, minimum.

This is why they’re down to her and him: they’re weird and contradictory.

Add extraordinary, self-believing, wilfully ignorant, gloriously ambitious. But far from free, much as they claim to be “the freest nation in history.”