Austen & Int'l Women's Day

[jmc_bks]

I bounced around via a bunch of links to this BBCNews piece on Jane Austen's continued popular appeal.

And I listened to yesterday's episode of Democracy Now! Which was utterly demoralizing. Goodman focused on women in the American armed forces as part of International Women's Day. She interviewed a researcher and several women who were or still are in the armed forces and served in Iraq. Transcript is here. Or you can use the link on that page to download the podcast or listen/watch online.

Two incredibly disturbing things to me: first, a clip of Col. Janice Karpinsky of Abu Ghraib infamy, the highest ranking officer to be censured in any way over AG (she was a Brigadier General, now is a Colonel), speaking about the deaths of women soldiers in the Middle East. Not because of combat injuries, but because they dehydrated and died in their bunks because were too scared to leave their relative safety at night to get water or go to the latrine (so they stopped drinking early in the afternoon) for fear of being assaulted by their fellow soldiers. And that Gen. Rick Sanchez (I think that was his name) didn't want the cause of death or sex repeated during briefings, so it was just generally listed as "non-combat related". ETA: As sarahf points out in the comments, there is no verification of Karpinski's testimony, so this may be an urban legend. There are links in the comments to a Salon article (with comments include questions about the Karpinski's trustworthiness and her source of information) and About.com, which links to audio of the testimony.

Second profoundly disturbing part of the episode: an interview with Spc. Mickiela Montoya, who said that she carried a knife to be safe. Safe from whom? "[S]afe from the other soldiers. I never intended on using the knife for an Iraqi. I had my M-16 for that. But my knife, I always just kept it for another soldier...."

Now, I think that the armed forces have their share of good people and bad people: they are a microcosm of America with all attendant social goods and ills. And I know that there are as many good men in the armed forces who would never dream of assaulting a colleague. But listening to this just made me feel physically ill.

Comments

[tinyluv.livejournal.com]

What a tragedy. Of course, don't shed light on the problem so you can fix it. It makes my stomach churn to read this.

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW, I've heard that the dehydration story is an urban legend. Karpinski is the only source so far. I'm willing to believe anything about our fellow humans and esp. the military, but I find this one difficult to believe.

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was me.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning -- I'll put a qualifier in the post.

Follow up

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I checked Snopes.com but didn't find anything. Checked about.com and found this: http://uspolitics.about.com/b/a/207591.htm. Which links to a Salon article (http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/01/30/karpinski/index.html) (viewable via a free, sponsored pass by an advertiser), but still only goes to what Karpinsky said.

Re: Follow up

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Right. I was finding lots and lots of articles that came out right around the same time (Jan/Feb last year) that all cited Karpinsky and nothing else. I think we would have heard more about it since then if it were true.

[(Anonymous)]

Seeing you mentioned Austen..

You talked about the new ITV adaptions ages ago, and I thought you might be interested to know that the BBC late night review programme reviewed the first two programmes last night. None of the reviewers liked Mansfield Park - they thought Billie Piper was badly miscast as Fanny, and that the adaption didn't do the book justice - but they were all quite enthusiastic about the Northanger Abbey adaption, which is the one scripted by Andrew Davies.

Still, even a bad adaption of Austen may be more fun than most TV.

Marianne McA

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the information, Marianne!