Lileks is in top form with this essay eviscerating this Brit columnists George Monbiot's unintentionally condescending view of the poor in Ethiopia.

Monbiot:
it is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.

Lileks:
The life expectancy in Nigeria is 46 years.

Is it just me, or does this smack of the old Happy-Darky myth they used to peddle in the South? Look at them down there stampin’ their feet in the mud as they dance - why, they’re happier than most of the belles you see at a cotillion. But how, exactly, does Monbiot know that Westerners smile less at one another, or express less affection? It’s possible he peeked into someone’s window, saw a man push his wife away and harangue her for expressing affection in front of the double-glazing and remote controls, but this smacks of one of the Pissy Miserablist’s most precious tenets:

Only proles, third-world victims, and leftist intellectuals can experience honest emotion. Everyone else is as cold as coins. The very presence of a Krups juicer in a kitchen tells you that these people never have wild monkey sex, or discuss Lucian Freuds’ transgressive redefinition of the body in Western Art.

-p (classic)