Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

Never Is the Next New Thing

Does Daddy Likey? Plus, Serious Stuff.

by

Does this Antik Batik dress qualify me for the Don’t Show-Cha Your Chocha feature, Winona?

Hello!
Goodbye!

I wore this to a dinner for the Overseas Press Club Awards last night, where I had the pleasure of bumping into glamorous author Tracy Quan.

Tracy and her friend Keith.

MrB gave the keynote speech with Fernando in his pocket.

Establishing shot of iHog in pocket

 

Giving the speech

The iHog was completely hidden in the depths of the pocket during the speech. The Overseas Press Club was honoring people for doing incredible and risky reporting. Fernando didn’t want to distract from their achievements, so he lay low, but I assure you he was there. To give you an understanding of the work that was being recognized, here is an except from MrB’s speech:

Six years ago I stood before this group and, like Ali Fadeel tonight, lit a candle to honor a fallen journalist, in that case Danny Pearl, who had just been murdered in Pakistan. Since then, 292 more journalists have been killed in the line of duty, an average of about 47 a year. As a reader and viewer, therefore — and even more as the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is my moonlighting job — I’m deeply appreciative of what you do, and how challenging it often is to do it…

I think it’s useful, in this regard, to name names. Vladimir Putin in Russia has essentially seized personal control of national television, and has facilitated a political and legal climate in which journalists are murdered with impunity: 14 since he took office in 2000. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has also brought television in his country to heel. The ruling regimes in China and Cuba are neck and neck in terms of which country is jailing the most journalists in the world, with China the dubious leader, 25 to 22. Robert Mugabe’s instinctive reaction to the will of the Zimbabwean people — that he leave office — was to suppress the press reporting the story.

In this country, we are particularly blessed by the First Amendment, and a tradition of support for press freedom that stretches back to Franklin and Jefferson and Madison and beyond.

But I think we also need to acknowledge the fraying of the informal compact among the Executive Branch, the courts and the press that for many years made sure that leak inquiries, when undertaken in earnest, would center on the leakers themselves. In recent years, the Executive Branch — unable to police its own house — has turned on journalists in such cases, with the courts increasingly declining to stand up for free-press values….

If you want to read the whole speech, contact me at wbjewelry at hotmail dot com and I will send it to you.

Because there were 21 awards plus a special one for photojournalist James Nachtwey, I won’t list all the winners here but will point out a few:

  • John Moore of Getty Images, for photographs of the assassination Benazir Bhutto and its aftermath;
  • Cedric Gerbehaye from Agency Vu – Newsweek, for “Congo in Limbo,” his photographs of the suffering people of Congo;
  • A group from ABC News-Nightline for reporting on the soldiers of Battle Company, 173rd U.S. Airborne, based in Afghanistan;
  • A group from PBS for reporting on child brides on three continents;
  • A group from the New York Times for “A Toxic Pipeline,” the influential report on how poison from China ended up in pharmaceuticals across the globe;
  • A group from Frontline/CBC/WGBH-Boston for “On Our Watch,” a documentary about the massacre of 200,000 Darfur Sudanese.

Basically, everything you know about Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Bosnia, and other horrifying places comes from the likes of the honorees: people who have been stalked, harassed, arrested and — as MrB pointed out — murdered to bring you news from around the world. This is why I hate ignoramuses who whine about how the media doesn’t cover this and the media doesn’t cover that. If the media doesn’t cover it, jackholes, how do you KNOW about it? Did you drop by Congo yourself? Did you get it from bloggers who rarely leave their local coffee shops or make a phone call to confirm a rumor? Did you put your ear up to Santa Angelina‘s Messiah-carrying womb and hear the voice of God telling you about the suffering of innocents? Because whenever I put my ear there, bitches, all I hear is the ocean.

Wait…wait…nope.
Still hearing the ocean.

There might be more serious international journalism if page views didn’t go elsewhere, but that says more about the readers than it does about the reporters, doesn’t it? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for fun. God wouldn’t have invented fun if She didn’t want us to have it. So if you’re lucky enough to have a life where you don’t have to constantly worry about survival, you should take as much pleasure in it as you can. Enjoy latex leggings, molecular gastronomy, Judd Apatow movies, Yankees-vs-Red Sox curses, lolcats, Amy Winehouse and Blake Incarcerated, the little dance Ellen does at the beginning of her show or whatever else blows your skirt up as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. People who are 100% save-the-world are hard to take. But even worse are people who are 95% trivial and 5% ungrateful whining about how no one ever tells them anything. Those people remind me of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. “You should have told me not to throw the Asians out, in the first place,”Amin says to his doctor/adviser during a political crisis. “I DID!” says the doctor, to which Amin retorts, “But you did not persuade me, Nicholas. You did not persuade me!” Peeps, you are being told things. Don’t come crying to me if you refuse to be persuaded.

“What did you say?”

Again, here’s the link to the list of this year’s Overseas Press Club honorees. Feel free to search for their names online to see more of their great work.

You might also like
Awards for MrB and Barbaralee
London, Day 1: Standing in the English Rain
A Business Tip for Artists

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. i’ve harbored a serious love for james nachtwey since those college photography class days. what is he like in person? have you met him?

    p.s. great post!

  2. Somlynn, he was very handsome and someone who has known him for a long time said that in his youth he was even more mind-blowingly handsome. This person was also trying to persuade me to ask Nachtwey to take my picture with Fernando, insisting he would be hugely amused by it, but I was way too shy to ask him for that kind of foolishness! Imagine this guy who has taken all kinds of photos of suffering people all over the world being asked to take a snapshot of a woman and her pig.

  3. lol! goosebumps!

    i always imagined nachtwey as that guy all the ladies threw themselves over, but he himself never taking any interest. and if there was one ever to stand a chance how would one stand being second wife?

    and wendy B TOO SHY! what is this?

  4. My source said Nachtwey was quite a ladies’ man and that most likely he would love to take a pig photo provided it was for a lady. But I still wasn’t persuaded to try. Also, I’m no lady! What kind of trash talk is that? 😉

  5. sorry if this is a lil of topic, BUT OH MY GOD YOU MET Zoe kravitz, ur so super lucky, and i just wondered if net a porter dosent take your shoes back id be interested in buying them.

  7. that pic of your hubby with Fernando is precious! i doubt you’re older than my mommy…you look like you’re my age 24!!!

  11. Amen.

    And I love Nachtwey. He spoke at my old place of employment a few years ago and I was blown away. Definitely on the list of artists whose work I would own if I didn’t, ya know, work in the arts (and therefore have no money). He’s quite yummy!

  12. That was some interesting linkage to my little blog. It’s funny, that Blake Incarcerated post is not very indicative of my content, but of course, it gets the most traffic from Google. That and my global warming post.

    A better link would have been to my friend, texasinafrica.blogspot.com, who has been to the Congo many, many times and has dedicated her PhD work to it.

  13. Wendy

    Obviously serious and important stuff being honored there… as it should be.

    But I also want to see big pics of your dresses!

    Luv
    Poochie

  14. Well done to you and the Mr.

    Just in case you think you’re the only one with important political opinions, I think that there is far too much skullduggery and gladhanding in politics.

    No, I don’t know what either of those mean. I went to a state school.

  15. Kudos to the Mr. I knew I liked him!! He gives a great speech AND kept his wife happy by having Fernando in his pocket.

  16. Kudos to the Mr. I knew I liked him!! He gives a great speech AND kept his wife happy by having Fernando in his pocket.

  17. Fernando is now bigger than the Hoff. This is just insanity.

    LOVE the Antik Batik.

  18. With these standards you set, Fernando’s going to be absolutely impossible when he comes home. As it is, he’s lucky if I take him to the grocery store.

  19. Lots of good material here: both fabric and frankness. Thanks for taking the time to work up this post, Wendy. I appreciate it.

  21. its great to see important things in the world be awarded…but luckily fernando had the humility to hide in daddyB’s pocket so as not to steal the limelight!

    by the way your dress looks HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT!!!

  23. I like how your husband brought the serious and the silly at the same time.
    I almost hate the word “media” as much as I hate the word “society.”
    Do you know what I mean?

  25. Thank you for your kind comments, peeps!
    Poochie, if only I could figure out how to let the photos pop up to be bigger without letting them be SOOOO big.