CA$HING IN ON MISERY

I try to check in with CNN regularly to get an update on the outside world, and the last few days the website has been dedicated exclusively to the recent earthquake in Haiti. They estimate 200,000 dead and nearly 1.5 million homeless, which strikes me as one of life's typical tragedies. No one suffers more than the poor. You never hear of these death-toll figures coming out of Switzerland or the French Riviera.

One thing that catches my attention in particular is this Anderson Cooper, who seems mysteriously omnipresent for any global disaster - exceedingly manicured and empathetic, rendering the outrage of humanity in teary-eyed teasers that keep us tuned in through the next commercial break. The dead, dying, and dismembered bodies. Mass, unmarked graves. The starving, homeless survivers. Looting and riots. A tanned and well-toned Anderson Cooper sips at his venti caramel latte, name dropping catastrophies like a B-list actor at a Golden Globes after-party. A bit more than Katrina as I recall, not quite Indonisia 2004. Anderson Cooper, the sommelier of catastrophy. I recommend a pairing of Vin jaune with walnuts and Comte cheese. In all fairness I suppose homelessness and starvation are not necessarily the prerequisites for fair reporting on homelessness and starvation...

All this reminds me of when John and Marta came to Istanbul. We'd spent the last Saturday at the Grand Bazzar and in the evening caught the tram headed back through Sultanahmet and out of the Golden Horn to catch the ferry at Kabataş. So we jumped off the tram at the Blue Mosque to relax and enjoy a cocktail at the Sultan Pub. There we found this street kid, not more than 12 years old on the sidewalk selling tissues. So John sees this kid and pulls out his Canon. Marta buys a packet of tissues. John snaps off some quick shots from a distance and then the kid looks up. Happy kid, sees John and smiles. So John, having gotten the green light, comes in for a close up. I'm there standing off to the side watching the kid squatting on the sidewalk and John snapping pictures and people passing on the street staring at John Rutland the imperialist American, stealing the sorry soul of this poor lost street orphan. And before my very eyes my brother is transformed suddenly into bluejean Hitler. Indignant, the tourists pass the spectacle of John documenting the exploitation of adolescent labor- of John Rutland the perpetuator of child-hood slavery. John Rutland, a cloven-hooved Beezelbub in a burka tap dancing on the mutalated genital of female circumcision - for street ophans.

Waves of detatched pedestrians expressed their disgust, not by the dismissable banality of a street-kid peddling tissues, but by the spectacle of a tanned and well-toned westerner projecting said street urchin into the light of their undismissable consciousness. One couple in particular - a black man with short dreadlocks and his uber-albino, euro-trash girlfriend took a double-take, and later a triple-take at the scene, muttered and grimaced as they passed by. I was siezed by the impulse to defend my brother and tossed a quick comment into the path of their interrupted stroll "We are not in the earthquakes business - we are only here to document the aftermath."