Absurdity, Allegory and China

Last night while I was talking with my mother in Philadelphia, a wonderful woman (she’s my mom, after all), she said, “I heard that there was another earthquake in China close to where the big one was in May.” I told her I’d not heard, though as we chatted I got on the web and found that AP was covering the 6.0 temblor. This morning CNN had this to report:

The quake’s epicenter was located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northwest of Guangyuan [Plant 821, a large plutonium producing reactor is located near Guangyuan, a city that lost 5,000 people in the May 12 earthquake], near Sichuan’s border with neighboring Gansu province.

Hours before the quakes struck, the Olympic torch relay made its way through parts of Sichuan, on its way to the Summer Games, which get under way Friday in Beijing, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) away.

The earthquake occurred at 5.49 p.m. local time (0949 GMT), news agency Xinhua said — striking a few hours after the relay made its final stop in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

I have just gone through the People’s Daily, China Daily and Xinhua and learned that Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games: (Kazakhstan was the first stop on the international leg of the torch relay and Mr. Nazarbayev, a character with some serious issues of one-man rule, also was a torch bearer); that both the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Quatar’s Crown Prince have arrived in Beijing; that Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukado may not this year visit “Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II;” and that Reuters has pledged fair coverage for the Beijing Games. But not one mention of the latest Sichuan earthquake, close to the border with Gansu.

In some world some of this is considered great news. Where else would I have learned that Reuters has made a pledge to Beijing to be fair? Reuters does, in fact, have a story on last evenings earthquake, which shows that they are keeping their word. But what about the state media? What are they pledging? To close their eyes in hopes that all things bad will somehow go away? That hasn’t worked so far.

There’s nothing really wrong with reporting what insurers refer to as Acts of God, which means that no one can possibly be blamed. It’s not just about the fuwa fuzzies.