No matter what you think of the European refugee crisis ...

[uwe]

... this is mandatory viewing until - the very surprising and touching - end ...

[Dave W]

I don't think this is a subject for a humorous treatment, even well intentioned. I'll refrain from saying more.

[uwe]

Did you see the end? I thought that was a nice touch and it probably made a handicapped Syrian girl very happy.

Reminds me of the parable (I always thought it was by Berthold Brecht, but I can't trace it to him) where a man feeds a solitary pauper and is chided by his friend that feeding that one needy person changes nothing about the injustices of the world, but only stills his/her hunger for a short moment. And that inherent conflict between applying a bandaid and curing the larger world is then repeated in writing over and over "changes nothing ..., but ...".

You may agree with John Oliver's views on war-spawned migration or not. You may think it's silly and self-serving to talk two "Days of our Lives"-soap opera stars



into playing an imagined scene (at 15:45) for just their little Syrian fan. Yes, it is irrelevant for the vast majority of Syrian refugees and won't help them from drowning. But it made me and hopefully that girl feel better for a little while. That's all.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34388914

[uwe]

Flash thought: Unless, of course, you meant with your comment

"I don't think this is a subject for a humorous treatment, even well intentioned. I'll refrain from saying more."

that the premature and largely undeserved NBC soap series death of EJ/James Scott is nothing to joke about! In that case I had no intention of hurting your feelings as an avid "Days of our Lives" watcher, I had no idea, dear Dave, but it's all good!!!

[Dave W]

I stand by my comment. The ending of the segment trivializes the whole sad situation. Focusing on making one little girl happy in an ocean of misery makes me angry.

As for the soap opera, I know nothing about it. Couldn't care less.

[uwe]

I hear you and now we have a real philosophical debate, Dave, but it's a good one. Yes, doing a little (and short-termed) good is in danger of trivializing and also very convenient. Yet to feel good because of or at least moved by it is very human. It explains why Anne Frank's Diary sells consistently better than photobooks about Auschwitz. It gives pain and suffering a (pleasant) face. That, in my book, is not a bad thing, even though it banally latches onto how human empathy works.

Yes, she was a fine choice - better than an angry young man with a gun belt crying Allah is great! - being a young girl, in a wheelchair, still smiling after the ordeal, with a quick mind, language capabilities and an endearing crush for soap opera series stars - as not only girls throughout the world sometimes have. But it might also make some people think that the refugees are more than an anonymous mass of future problems washed onto our shores.

[patman]

My heart goes out to those people...

My relatives pretty much did the same thing coming here at the start of WWI...

[slinkp]

I don't think this was your implication, but I don't think Anne Frank's diary trivializes anything.  It ends right where several million other stories ended.

If any of you have a chance to visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, go. To see the rooms where they hid, to see Anne's own belongings and her own handwriting, and then to see the certificate verifying that she and her family were exterminated... in the middle of a record book, one of many, meticulously listing thousands upon thousands of other deaths ... I can't find words.

[uwe]

No, I did not mean to insinuate that; my point was that she gave the Holocaust an early face.

[4stringer77]

This whole sticky situation should be getting cleared up with a little help from the spetsnaz right about now and then everybody can go home and leave Europe alone. There's going to be lots of work for all these refugees to do rebuilding Syria afterward.

[nofi]

there will never be an "afterward" in syria.

[Dave W]

This whole sticky situation should be getting cleared up with a little help from the spetsnaz right about now and then everybody can go home and leave Europe alone. There's going to be lots of work for all these refugees to do rebuilding Syria afterward.

How about the West leaving the Middle East alone? Don't get me started....

[4stringer77]

When everyone stops using oil and the central banks stops trying to prop up the petro dollar then the west might start leaving the Mideast alone.

[Pilgrim]

I doubt there will be an "afterward" for the entire Middle East. The differences there seem to be too intractable for resolution.

[nofi]

you should read the other posts before you reply. but you did get the chance to use intractable.