I'd like to offer an apology and a clarification to remarks I made recently.
While on the David Letterman program, I joked that I might need a "mail-order bride" to achieve the goal of having more children in my life. I believe that most people understood that this was a joke and took it as such. (A dated reference, no doubt, and another sign of my advancing age.) However, I do apologize to anyone who took offense. The comments of some Philippine government officials come as no surprise to me, either. Even the one by a former action film star-turned-Senator who beckoned me to come to the Philippines so he could "beat" me over my comment.
Such anger and frustration about the issue of sex trafficking is understandable. The Philippines has suffered significant problems with the issue of sex trafficking and I would like to turn your attention to the work of an organization called Love146 that my brother Stephen educated me about. Visit their website at www.love146.org and learn of the important work that is being done, in various regions of the world, by Rob Morris and his co-founders and staff.
I had met with Rob in New York, some months before the Letterman appearance, in the hopes of helping him raise money for this group. Again, I apologize for the perceived insensitivity of that remark and ask you to visit the Love146 site.
The clarification I offer involves my post related to the American auto industry. Nowhere in that post do I state I want U.S. autoworkers to lose jobs. Nowhere in that post do I state I want U.S. autoworkers to cut wages or benefits. Nowhere in that post do I state that I want U.S. autoworkers to lose their pensions. I state, by using the phrase "pull the plug," that taxpayer funds should no longer be made available to bail out U.S. automotive corporations. They should file for bankruptcy, reorganize and emerge as wholly reconfigured entities, perhaps with labor owning significant positions in those companies.
The U.S. government should develop and implement a plan to help refit the U.S. auto industry with the capability of mass producing the new generations of fuel efficient vehicles (using the California standard) that Americans will require in the coming decades.
But giving more money to Detroit means giving more money to GM, Chrysler and Ford, and that is a horrible idea.
U.S. autoworkers are, at least today, casualties of very bad policy by the government and godforsaken management by the Big Three. Sacrifices will need to be made by these workers in order to emerge from this catastrophe. But the demand for well-made trucks of all kinds, military vehicles, emergency vehicles including ambulances and fire trucks, buses and any other product with wheels and an engine will carry on. Americans are good at making those things. Better than anyone. It is the car that you and I drive every day to work or for pleasure that must change. It is changing. Other companies, based in other cultures, faced that before we did. Now it is time to face that here, too.
Two comments that stuck out to me. One is that I should look into a Ford Fusion, which I will do ASAP. If the best hybrid is American-made, I am elated. The other is that I am anti-labor. I find that ridiculous in the extreme. The rank and file of the UAW have three people to blame for this: Big Three brass, Washington chickenshits who let Detroit roll over them, and the UAW leadership itself, which let its members play in traffic, if you will, for decades, until a fleet of better made Japanese cars came down that road and you know the rest.
I would like nothing more than to see every UAW worker find a good paying job in a new, reconfigured auto industry.
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Though I highly doubt that you will ever read my comment, I just feel the need to comment concerning your "joke." I'm a Filipino immigrant for years now and about to start my freshman year in college. As an immigrant from a third-world country such as the Philippines, it is evident that a lot of us do leave our country in search of better opportunities. As delusional as that may seem now, in reference to our economy, life here is much better than in our native country. I deem that's the reason why a lot of educated Filipina women sacrifice their dignity and acquiesce to a far less laudable job-even becoming a "mail-ordered wife." Nonetheless, they do this because it is the only way to escape from their poverty-stricken life. I was never cognizant of how liberating life is here in America until I migrated and compared my life back in the Philippines.
Human trafficking should not be taken as a joke. A lot of women suffer everyday because of this. They suffer verbal, physical and emotional abuse that they must face with for the rest of their life. Though I do agree that the joke did come out of your comedic demeanor, we, as your audience, shouldn't let is pass and succumb to intolerance.
http://www
Not being a moralist- but this issue of mail order bride is a modern version of buying and selling a ‘person’, though you said it is vogue for the moment, I don’t think it is a rationale idea to promote and encourage the people about the trade or even joke about it. Surely ninety percent of the case would be misused by organized crime or syndicates. Are we living in a modern civilized world or not? Why do some people still promote this uncultured trade? Just for money? :-(.
Any social event promoted for singles like cruises or specific holiday tours abroad etc. or any commercial endeavor that provides opportunity for available women to meet available men is no different then a marriage brokering service.
People promote it because it enables many women to find better lives elsewhere then they might otherwise find living trapped in countries where single parents or older single women are stigmatized and have little chance of finding a mate.
And how do I know this? Because I met my wife this way and we are happily married after 8 years.And I know others who have had the same positive experience.
You might find Ms Loeb's link above to Glamour magazine interesting in that she's merely voicing what many like myself already know but are too afraid to admit publicly because many do still view this like you do - with preconceived notions that are pretty much baseless.
‘IN’ the Philippines? THE TRADE ITSELF IS FROM USA and IN the USA, maybe some of the unfortunate victims are from Philippines. Let us see next time, if you would still laugh if one of your kids or relatives would be a victim of the nasty trade and fall into the hands of the evil men.
I bet Alec Baldwin ignorantly thinks that most of the new Russian looking and Asian looking women immigrants that are married with Americans are all mail order brides from Russia and the Philippines, and he didn’t really know what he joked about or he is not really aware of the nasty trade that obviously corrupting the people, not only in USA but globally. Sad thing is, what’s said is said, good that he learned and made an apology. Whatever kind of remarks you uttered is your own accountability. To say you are sorry or declare your apology is an act of honour and later in your life you will receive respect from people instead of disgust.
Although most world religions are trying to instruct moral values to change people’s way of life from barbaric to refined, but it didn’t help, because there are lots of men who are genetically evil. So, the discourse on this sensitive issue still ends on every society’s governments and its rational people. If you are not one of them, perhaps I don’t need to argue.
http://ncp
And why Abastenia Eberle’s 'The White Slave’ sculpture caused controversy in her time? Because white slavery is the synonym of child prostitution, means that white men in her time-1800s, were fond of raping children, as well as women.
Whatever kind of remarks you uttered is your own accountability.
To say you are sorry or declare your apology is an act of honour and later in your life you will receive respect from people instead of disgust.
1. Your conclusion is based on the same faulty 'analysis' (and I use the term loosely) in your original column--and therefore your conclusion is equally faulty.
2. Would you buy a car from a bankrupt automaker? You can't even be bothered to research your hybrid purchase, and had to be educated by the many readers who told you about the Fusion Hybrid. How do you think the American public will react.
3. Yes, government screwed up. Big Three leadership screwed up. Big Oil screwed everybody. But let's not leave the UAW blameless. UAW leadership were elected by the UAW rank and file, and so let's not paint the UAW rank and file as wholly innocent victims. The union system has long protected the (admittedly small) portion of workers who take advantage of the rock-solid, you-can't-fire-me setup to get paid for little or no actual work. ["How many Teamsters does it take to change a light bulb? 32. You gotta problem with that?")
I'll agree that your companies have been mismanaged, but a lot of that has been because of UAW contracts that required money that COULD have gone into captial improvements being spent on healthcare for retirees, pensions and other union-driven initiatives.
Please note that NON-UNION auto companies have fared much better in this recession. The auto industry has demonstrated once and for all that unions will kill a healthy industrty. Look at steel. Look at textiles. Now look at Detroit. Unions murder industry.
And, yes, I do resent like hell that my tax dollars will be used to pay for your ludicrously over-inflated wages. My kids and their kids will be paying for theses "loans," and I still wouldn't bet either GM or Chrysler will end up a competitive companies. It's over. Your UAW cronies can blame whoever you want to. Start by looking in the mirror.
So, maybe you should start looking in the mirror before you make judgments on people you know nothing about. Have you worked for the UAW. Have you worked as management in the U.S. Auto Industry? Do you know anything about the jobs we do? Have you ever even stepped on a factory floor? When you have done all those things, then you can judge us. It's called an educated opinion. BTW, why do you seem like you are filled with so much hate and anger.
Also, IT'S NOT A GIFT!!!!!! IT'S A LOAN WITH INTEREST!!!!!!!
The "non-union" plants have been given loans from their countries to make it through this economic disaster. Toyota employees actually make more money an hour then GM, Ford and Chrysler employees do. They foreign companies that located here have been "GIVEN" 3.4 BILLION OF U.S. TAX DOLLARS TO LOCATE HERE. And that is what w4e know about. They have been given free land to build their factories on. The states they are located in have build most of their factories on the tax payers dime. They don't have to pay any property tax. They have local government fleet contracts. GM, Ford and Chrysler don't get any of that.
*Holden (Australia)
*Opel (Germany & Europe)
*Vauxhall (England)
Daewoo (South Korea)
SAAB (Sweden)
Isuzu (Japan)
Think & research before you put fingers to keyboard next time, and also stop with the union-bashing.
Do you realize if the U.S. Auto Industry goes down there are 7,400,000 jobs related to them? There is an average of 4.5 people in a family. That equals 33,300,000 with no income. Do you realize it will cost the federal government $150,000,000 in the first year for unemployment benefits, retirement guarantees, medicare and medicaid, welfare and food stamps. Then, it's 80,000,000 the next year. Now wouldn't it be cheaper to give them a loan?
Apology excepted.
If you really want to get a handle on what it would mean if GM were to go under, do your self a favor and spend some time in Detroit. It wouldn't hurt to go to places like Cleveland, Cinci, Toledo, and Pittsburg while you're at it.
Some of these communities are already approaching a depression-like economy to begin with. If GM disappears a million people who depend on GM, one way or the other will lose their livelihoods. Every single person in the Detroit Metro area is in some way tied to the health of auto industry. Whether they wash dishes in a restaurant or work on the line.
There is so much at stake here. Probably the only way to truly understand it is to see it in person.