15117: Pina comments on Peter Dailey's Pay Day (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: Kevin Pina         <kpinbox@hotmail.com>


Peter Dailey's recent review of Fatton's "Haiti's Predatory Republic:
The Unending Transition to Democracy", for the New York Review of Books,
amounts to nothing more than a U.S. State Department "White Paper" on Haiti
masquerading as a book review. Its zenith and purported ephiphony are
achieved through the editorialization and politization of a simple and
forthright task.

>From the propagandistic title, "Haiti: The Fall of the House of Aristide",
to the fact that the first five thousand words in part one only mentions the
author nine times while only directly quoting or referencing material from
the actual book six times, it is clear this is
meant more to poison the reader's minds against Aristide and Lavalas then it
is to explain Fatton's marvelous and complex view of Haitian history. Aside
from the prequisite labeling of the piece a "book review", with the title
and author in the masthead of the piece, the title and the author apparently
do not deserve as much weight as Dailey's own verbage until the fifth
paragraph.

It certainly comes nowhere near to achieving an explanation of Haiti's
current complex reality as its main subjects, namely the majority of the
poor who continue to support Aristide and Lavalas, are not factored into his
regurgitated and pat analysis. Given this, one must ask exactly how much
time has Mr. Dailey actually spent in Haiti?

Perhaps the most transparent sentence in his diatribe is, "According to a
recent poll, fully 67 percent of the Haitian population would emigrate if it
were possible." Dailey avoids citing the author of this alleged poll while
we are left to wonder why that figure exactly mirrors the percentage of the
plurality of the vote by which Aristide was elected in December 1990. In
another windy passage Dailey writes, "The administrations of Aristide and
Preval have been marked by corruption and ineptitude and have choked Haiti's
economy and increased unemployment-estimates run as high as 80
percent-leaving the Haitian people mired in poverty, social unrest, and
despair." It is not until three paragraphs later that Dailey mentions almost
dismissively the theme of the book, "Scholars like Michel-Ralph Trouillot
and Robert Fatton however, have convincingly argued that the authoritarian
and corrupt nature of Haiti's governments from Dessalines to the present is
the product not of some intrinsically Haitian character, but of Haiti's
history, and is rooted in the early years of the Haitian Republic." One can
understand why Dailey made this choice when the entire thrust of this
mislabeled "book review" is to make Haiti's current ills exclusively
"intrinsic" to the character of Aristide and Lavalas. This more than runs
counter to the analysis in Fatton's book and exposes Dailey for the State
Department hack he really is.

This is only a cursory deconstruction of the first part and I can't wait to
get my hands on the second installment of this State Department "White
Paper." If the second part equals the length of this more than five thousand
word diatribe against understanding the truth in Haiti, at one dollar a word
or even fifty cents per word, it was indeed a very good pay day for Mr.
Dailey.

If you wish a well written and impartial review of Fatton's book, I would
direct to Bob Corbett's any day of the week. Reread it and see the
difference for yourselves.


Note: Dailey's "pay day" can be found at:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16126





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