Embarrassed by my roots
Watching the weekly half an hour Hungarian TV show on CFMT (OMNI 1-Channel 4) (2012 May 19th episode) Five segments with some advertising and some horrendous operetta music at the end.
The Ontario Trillium Foundation gave money to a Hungarian theatre project to stage a play about the last days of World War II, a family trying to survive and cope with life. The TV show was invited to the reading rehearsal. I was not able to determine the language of the performance as it was voiced over by the commentary describing it. The only participant we heard speaking was the author of the play casting his daughter in the role of his mother. Judging from his incredibly poor, typical second generation broken Hungarian, it is safe to assume that the play is in English. I could not find their grant which is, quite possibly but not necessarily, less than the average. The foundation distributes 120 million dollars amongst 1,500 recipients.
An interview with the visiting founder of the ‘mag’(seed) movement which is calling for a return to our pre-industrial roots of idyllic harmony with nature and each other. They are against everything modern and foreign, including modern or even traditional Chinese medicine, advocating Hungarian folk medicine instead. They have courses to re-teach the basic technologies of pre-industrial life. A disturbing mixture of the preppers, the de-growth movement and Hungarian nationalist romanticism.
Short documentary about the Crawford lake Iroquois village. Strikingly similar in its stupidity to the preceding segment idealizing 15th century Native American life style.
Regular segment of a local, ethnic Hungarian economist dispelling myths about Hungary’s EU membership. I don’t know what was more embarrassing, the fact that after stating that he reviewed several articles, he simply read quotes from a single article in a Hungarian paper; OR the article itself. The sum of the commentary of a leading Hungarian paper is that Hungarians shouldn’t complain because they are getting more money out of the Union than what they are putting in. The incoming transfer payments amount to 10% of Hungarian GDP.
I have absolutely no interest in spectator sports so I skipped the segment.
No brains, no spine. Leeches on Canada and Europe, advocating leeches as an option to brain surgery which I think they sorely need themselves.
I hope I do not even need to mention that the show itself was also helped by the Canadian tax payers.
Looking at my roots, I often feel deep sadness or – as in this case – just plain embarrassment.
(note to self – Ask David whether the Trillium Alliance would oppose the very existence of the Trillium Foundation)