Iron Man Wang, Government Propaganda Poster
"It's absurd," Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at People's University in Beijing, said of Yao's award. "Model workers should be ordinary people you can look up to and imitate. Yao Ming is an NBA star. That's honor enough. Besides, what he does, it's impossible for ordinary people to imitate."Whether Yao Ming is the right man for the Communist Party's exemplar I cannot say. However, this brings to mind something that has concerned me for some time. The people we choose to be our heroes have changed over the years. Not so many years ago when you asked a child who his hero might be, the answer would most likely be an astronaut or, maybe even closer to home, a policeman or fireman. Today's children are far more likely to pick a sports or music star as their role model. Although many of today’s sports stars are good people, the lives they lead aren’t those to which ordinary people might aspire. Honestly, I want the world for my daughters but I’d rather they didn’t follow in the footsteps of most of today’s pop culture icons.
I wonder, what has changed that has caused the world's focus to move from those who are good examples of honest, hard work and/or learning to those who have been successful winning life's popularity contests.
3 comments:
On that subject I would rather let Wang be the ideal model of people wanting to work their ass off for his political masters.
But my son,9 years old,wants me to get in touch with Scharzeneger to thank him for having played Terminator before getting involved in politics.Thanks Swartzy;from Nicolas.
Damn it, I asked Dominique to tell me if there was one or 2 gs in scharzenegger and she told me there was never two gs in German.
I'll have to make it up to him,guess i'll add an extra z or something.
Yes, it does seem more appropriate that an exemplar be one who works hard, displaying a higher moral standard.
I couldn't spell his name without looking it up first and I used to live in California. I cannot expect anyone else to do better unless they share the name as their own.
I would be very grateful if my children chose someone who has proven to stand on higher moral grounds as their mentor than most pop stars tend.
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