Mole People?

A video report posted on CNN earlier today featured reporter Eunice Yoon travelling to the underground homes that many have taken to in Beijing. The idea is that housing in China's capital has become so ridiculously expensive, or at least unaffordable to the general population, that people are being forced to move into old air raid shelters and other subaltern residences. It's horrible that the first thing I thought of when I saw this video was "Oh, look; China's version of the mole people!"; but honestly, can you blame me when the title of the report is China's Mouse Tribe?

After actually watching the report, that clearly isn't the case. When I was little, the mole people were a small subset of the population who chose to live in the sewers and had their own little communities there; they dressed in rags, never came out in the sunlight, and started to look and live like, well, moles--clearly more urban legend and cautionary tale than anything else. But this isn't the case with these people in Beijing. They live perfectly normal, above ground lives outside their homes and are not simply taking part in an alternative lifestyle; actually, they are forced to live this way because they have no alternatives. It's worth wondering if, in our current housing crisis with unemployment high and people unable to afford to keep their traditional housing, we will soon have our own mouse tribe in the US. Perhaps then the mole people will become reality.

Christiane Amanpour in Action

I linked to several of her transcripts and videos in my previous post about Christiane Amanpour, but here in her final CNN sign off is just a sampling of the amazing work she did in her 27 years there; Amanpour's Greatest Hits, if you will. She wasn't afraid to ask uncomfortable questions of powerful people, respectfully and subtly--not with the tenacity and aggression of other public intellectuals like, say, Gore Vidal--pushing their buttons to try and get at the truth. I'm not sure if she can maintain this kind of hard-hitting standard at ABC, but since it hasn't even been a full year run of the show I think it's still too soon to judge what her future at This Week will be like.