No Rock And Roll Fun

CHIN UP, SUPREME TELLS POOR KIDS: We're sure Mary Wilson's visit to a school in Dhaka was well-meant, but we're not so certain that her Margo Leadbetter lecture to children was very well-judged. Her text was "I was poor, too, but look - a spot of hard work and here I am", which misses the point that however bad 1950s America was, even for blacks in the South, it looks like the spilling of the cup of plenty compared to the situation in Bangladesh, a country with nearly half its population living under the poverty line. Mary Wilson's promise that, if they just knuckle down, all the children of the school could become internationally famous pop stars sounds a little like a glib claim that fails to acknowledge that in countries low down in the pile need more than just the gumption of their residents to get out of the hole.