June 17, 2014
Somaly Mam
Blogger Kate McMillan quips that “prostitution is to “sex work” what cigarette smoking is to “lung exercise.””
“Progressives” don”t just redefine (and valorize) deviancy; they insist on renaming it, too. We all hate this, and mock it. We”re always right. But they always win. You don”t still say “Negro,” do you? What about “foreigner”?
Now the word has gone forth that even the world’s oldest profession requires a brand-new, politically correct moniker. So you”ll wrap your mouth around “sex worker” too, rube. And swallow.
Even Canada’s red-top populist paper The Sun has shoved “sex worker” into its style guide. Over the weekend, it reported on a Toronto protest by radical “sex-work advocates,” during which about 100 women “played dead on the road.” (The symbolism rather eludes me; since when do hookers lay on their backs without being paid?)
Ingeniously, the Left also controls the anti-“sex work” racket and all its words, works, and pomps. And profits, of course. (Somewhere, Lucky Luciano is kicking himself.)
One of the last thrills still permitted us normal folks (for now) is getting to watch one of these self-appointed activists and advocates endure an Icarian tumble. Take that recent Newsweek exposé of secular saint and “sex work” abolitionist Somaly Mam.
No, I”d never heard of her before, either. I didn”t realize how far removed I was from what the authorities have deemed reality until I read that, among other things, this woman had been feted by the White House and the State Department, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, made the “TIME 100″ list, and declared one of Glamour‘s “Women of the Year.” Plus she”d been named one of the “Women Who Shake the World” by, er, Newsweek.
Cambodian-born Somaly Mam began making claims she”d been sold into sexual slavery as a youngster. After a daring escape, she dedicated her life to rescuing other girls from the same fate, leading armed raids on brothels, then providing shelter, education, and vocational training to the former captives”with the help of Western donors, many of them celebrities.
Aaaaaaannnnnddddd … ? Oh, come on. Guess.
Simon Marks has been investigating Mam for The Cambodia Daily (“All the News Without Fear or Favor”) for years. When Newsweek ran his findings in that cover story last month, the rest of the world found out what actual Cambodians and NGO-types have been trying to tell us all this time:
Mam’s “origin story” is mostly bollocks on stilts.
Her “rescues” are more like kidnappings, and her statistics about Cambodia’s trafficking rates, exaggerated. She coached non-ex-prostitutes to tell hair-raising tales of rape, torture, and even eye-gouging when pale-faced documentarians came calling. “[I]nstead of a brothel or a massage parlour,” Mam’s “rescued slaves” ended up “working for poverty-level wages in unsafe and exploitative conditions in sweatshops.”
Add Somaly Mam’s name to the list of beloved do-gooding impostors, fabulists, and serial exaggerators”Michael Moore, Rigoberta Menchu, Ward Churchill, Elizabeth Warren, Greg “Three Cups of Tea” Mortenson, the “gay girl in Damascus“ who turned out to be a middle-aged straight man in Georgia”who”ve faked their way through this century alone. Toss in the plagiarists”Chris Hedges (“Pulitzer winner. Lefty hero.“) is only the latest”and you”ve got a veritable avalanche of Anastasias.
How did Somaly Mam fool so many gullible, rich white bleeding hearts for so long? Well, as every hooker learns the hard way, you won”t survive long on these mean streets without a man around to protect you (sweetie). And in Mam’s case, that man was Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times.
Kristof started writing about the woman he calls his “hero” in 2008. He made a documentary, Half the Sky, about Mam’s anti-trafficking campaign and wrote the foreword to her autobiography, “in which he called her “the Harriet Tubman of Southeast Asia’s brothels.””
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