this week in badvocacy

• The Kristof's column about poor, drunk Africans who don't educate their children has set off a bit of a kerfluffle. See the Atlantic Wire for a nice summary of the debate's key points, Aid Watch's plea for a consideration of context (and a fantastic debate in the comments), and Wronging Rights' takedown of Kristof's blatant misreading of the Banerjee & Duflo article on which he bases his arguments. Oh, and this is the best blog post title ever.
  
• Dan Savage thinks we should stop giving aid to Malawi in response to the 14-year hard labor sentence pronounced by one of the country's courts on the same-sex couple who attempted to marry a few months ago. While I am certainly in agreement that the court's decision was horrific, I'm curious as to whether Savage really thinks it would be a good idea to cut access to the family planning services, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs, nutrition and food security assistance, and infectious disease treatment that US assistance currently provides to Malawi's poor. Given the widespread, deeply culturally-ingrained homophobia that persists in throughout the continent, I'm not sure that a moratorium on aid would have quite the effect Savage intends.