ROPES' CORNER

Elian is a six year-old boy who has two countries ready to declare war over him. He's captivated the American media, polarized an already fractured political landscape, provoked a constitutional crisis, and dominated our headlines for weeks. He's also the only alien (hmmm.... sounds a lot like Elian, doesn't it?) that American conservatives want to keep in this country! Years ago my ex-wife and I had our own dispute over custody of our two sons. I don't remember the Attorney General visiting either of us to mediate; and I'm sure I'd recall it if a federal SWAT team had taken them from one household and delivered them to the other. But of course, we and our children weren't important enough to merit that kind of attention

And therein lies the problem. By all accounts, Elian is a nice little guy and I earnestly hope that everything works out well for him. But in the grand scheme of things, he simply isn't all that important.

Here are a few statistics, to put things in proper perspective:

• In southern Sudan, at least three hundred and fifty thousand people in rebel-held areas urgently needed food aid.
• Reports from southern Somalia say nine people have died of starvation in the town of Bardale in the past two days. An official in the area said they included seven children whose families had gone to the town from surrounding villages in search of food and water, after hearing the UN World Food Programme had delivered relief supplies.
• The first deaths from starvation have been reported in the drought-stricken zone of northeastern Somalia. Reports say people are fleeing villages around the towns of Alula and Bargal, because of lack of water. Five children and three adults have already died.
• The U.N. World Food Program said Friday that hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia would face starvation after the country's worst harvest in five years.
• The leader of the Khoi-San people in northern Namibia say they are facing starvation because of fighting by secessionist rebels in the area.
• In January 1997 the Kenyan Government declared a state of national disaster after severe droughts threatened the livelihoods of two million people. Oxfam joined the Kenya Government to distribute food to about 150,000 people.
• The United Nations said in 1996 that about 22 million (emphasis mine) people in sub-Sahara Africa were facing starvation.

I could go on like that for pages, but you get the idea. The point is that I had to do some real research to find some of those statistics, while Elian's plight smacks me in the face every time I pick up a newspaper or magazine. I hope I'm not alone in my belief that those starving kids represent a more serious problem.

Where the hell are our priorities? How did we allow politics, money and power to become more important than human lives? Examples are everywhere; Elian is only the cause du jour. Let's shift the focus for a moment, just to make a point.

I recently read an article in U.S.News and World Report that really made me recoil in shock. It dealt with the current status of the ongoing battle between the various states and Big Tobacco. The writer stated that many of the states are becoming concerned that the tobacco industry could be driven into bankruptcy, and that would jeopardize their plans for the financial windfall they will reap from all the wrongful death suits! Ummmmm... Could we take a moment to regroup here? We've proven that tobacco addiction is a killer. We've proven that the industry has known this for decades but continued to push a product that takes lives. We know that they have not only covered up this knowledge but have added ingredients to make their product more addictive. We also know that their advertising has traditionally targeted young people, who weren't even old enough to smoke legally. I'm a smoker; have been for over forty years. Hell, I'm smoking as I write this. Would I like to quit, and possibly extend my life expectancy? Of course. Do I have the will power to quit? Obviously not. Would I like to see the tobacco industry disappear from the American scene, and take their noxious products with them? You bet I would. And wasn't that the point of all the legal action aimed at the industry over the past twenty years? Apparently not. Oh, I'm sure there were a few who brought those actions for humanitarian reasons. But now the governments have discovered that they can use that money to improve their schools and their roads. Now, they're terrified that they may be killing the egg-producing goose. They have their opponent on the run. If they back off one inch now, I would accuse them of tacit complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of current and future smokers. I'd rather have my sons undereducated and driving over potholes than watch them die young of lung cancer.

It's always been my belief that big problems are too much for us, so we beat the daylights out of the little ones. We get our teeth into a small issue (e.g. Elian) and worry it to pieces, like a puppy with a chew toy. And I hate to say this, but Americans are by far the worst offenders. As Oscar Wilde said, we are "....the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." We don't choose elected officials based on merit or their positions on big issues, but on their sex appeal and the cleverness of their advertising slogans. We preach equality; but if we awoke tomorrow and were all the same color, by noon people with brown eyes would be killing people with blue eyes. We pride ourselves on being a nation of laws, but psychologically we're only inches from living in trees and flinging offal at each other. We need to wake up and realize that 22 million starving Africans are more important than Elian Gonzalez's home address. We must come to grips with the fact that new schools and better roads are secondary to the lives of people who are doomed to heart and lung diseases. Terms like justice, equality, and humanity are not just buzz words; they are basic concepts that we have to learn to embrace and believe in so deeply that we won't even need laws to enforce them. But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.