Let me continue by saying I wish he would shut his friggin mouth.

The first time he made a comment about racism and Obama, I thought “Okay, this is sort of a problem, good for you”. The next time he made a comment about it I thought “Hmm, getting a little redundant, aren’t we?”

Now, I wish he would just quit talking about it and help us drop the whole black/white argument.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that there are still racial tensions in the good ol US of A, but I think that continuing on with this argument is hurting us. And I think that saying that Senator Wilson only said “YOU LIE” because he is racist, is probably a little far fetched. Maybe the guy really is racist. Maybe he’s not. I agree that him screaming out in the middle of Obama’s address was rude and disrespectful and certainly not acceptable behavior for a Senator. But I don’t really think it boiled down to racism. Maybe it did. But to me, screaming that out is more of a Republican being against a Democrat’s agenda than being against an African-American president.

I think we need to start working together and stop working against each other if we’re ever going to figure out this whole healthcare debate and so that we can grow stronger as a united nation rather than a divided one. I don’t have all the answers; no one does. But Mr. Carter, could you please drop the racist argument? It’s getting embarrassing.

Okay, now that that’s over with, let’s get to the point of this discussion. Some of you may remember about 2 years ago a story broke of a young Yemen girl who wanted to divorce her husband. Sounds normal enough until you dig deeper and see that the young girl was only 10 years old at the time and that her husband was more than 4 times her senior. As it turns out, Nujood Ali was sold into marriage by her impoverished father who could no longer afford to keep her in the family. He sold her to a man under the premise that he not try anything sexual with her until she reached puberty. Not surprisinginly, the man did not keep his promise to Nujood’s father and soon he was forcing her to have sex and sleep with him even when she begged not to.

In the wake of her divorce hearings, Nujood was honored and plastered all over the TV screens and the media. She was honored as a Woman of the Year in 2008 by Glamour magainze and interviewed by countless numbers of media outlets.

Two years later however, Nujood is not attending the private school that foreign benefactors are paying for and she is not doing much of anything. Instead, she’s refusing to see a psychiatrist and staying very, very angry at the whole situation.

Don’t get me wrong, this young girl has every right to be mad. What angers me is that instead of quietly getting this girl help behind the scenes, society chose to exploit her and put her story on as many cover pages as possible. Something that instead of helping, seems to only have hurt the child.  Sure, she’s no longer married to a man four times her senior, but her life is forever changed and she’s changed. She claims she can’t go to school because every where she goes she’s taunted and treated badly. She claims she’s angry because she can’t live a normal life. This story and so many other stories of children who are abused and then exploited absolutely breaks my heart.

At what point do we stop hurting those we’re trying to help and start helping? Nujood Ali didn’t need to be a Woman of the Year to get a divorce. And she didn’t need to do 1,000 TV interviews.  She needed some quiet saviors to come in and help and not ask for recognition of their good deeds. We all want the pat on the back that lets us know someone else thinks we did the right thing, but in the end, what message are we sending to people like Nujood Ali and others who end up in her situation and then are forgotten when the cameras are off?