You know how when you notice something it's suddenly all around you? This is happening to me with international do-gooder women and their irretrievably imperious Ugly American attitudes.
One of them is a nun who writes an innocent enough blog, La Paz de Susan. What could be wrong with that? Plenty. Sister Susan jetsets back and forth from El Salvador to the States and lives in obvious luxurious digs with a complement of paid guards. A Poor Claire she is not. There's more.
She has gone to help the benighted Salvadorans delivering volunteer health care. But she hasn't bothered to learn the language beforehand. Oh, how "cute" she is speaking pidgin Spanish! Salvadorans who mess up her name or make some other mistake concerning her status are ridiculously silly and subject to mockery.
Of course, being a Catholic nun she's not above the occasional fund-raising scam based on -- wait for it! -- a needy child. And let's not forget to post the picture of the woman with the basket on her head to delight the folks back home with a picture of the "natives."
Reading her blog I have no doubt why the Salvadoran military men knew they could murder four American religious women in 1980 with impunity. Without a doubt, these insufferable, self-absorbed dogooders have no clue as to their surroundings.
All they want is to feel good allegedly helping the poor subhumans.
