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Mon - Oct 25 -

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT ! -

On the weekend I would mostly prefer to post entries with a change of pace like the latest crop circle (an intriguing mystery to me) or a tabloid story or something literary. But this weekend there has been a spate of very un-PC things going on, some of which are noted here.

+ First, Mahmood in Bahrain has a hilarious rant about those Ramadan "Sweeps" TV series which had me ROTFLMAO. I thought I'd found a couple of interesting presentations. The one about the Egyptian millionaire looked like it might be entertaining. And then there's the one the Taliban don't want anyone to see. But what do I know. Mahmood is much more of an expert on such matters.

:: Mahmood's TV Rant ::


+ The UK Guardian has inexplicably "dumped" an entire week's worth of Salam Pax's Washington Diary entries all at once upon us this weekend. His narrative this time forth is missing that bumpy, breathless, staccato rush he used to evince before the US Army arrived on his doorstep, which was a quality he once attributed to too much coffee. Salam is now turning into a more fluid writer; his text flows, it moves forward and carries the reader with it; it's got readability. Of course his personal observations are filtered through his quirky sensibility-- but as Suzy (a famous jet set gossip columnist) used to say... 'who else would tell you these things?'

:: Salam's Washington Week Diary ::


+ Ian Mayes, The Guardian reader's editor, gives a sober wrap-up of the Clark County Affair. Oh, something about unforeseen blowback. But I, for one, was happy to discover that G2 Feature Editor, Ian Katz, has a good sense of humour. And, more importantly, I would not want to discourage him just because of the hubub about this project. His willingness to try new things helps give The Guardian a fresher quality than that found in many other newspapers. The result is, when you summon it up, you never know what surprises may be there. It isn't as stale and predictable as many of their American cohorts' Just-Us publications.

:: Trust me, I'm a Guardian reader ::


+ Lastly, an op-ed that ensued from the recent PLO Conference at Duke was published in a campus newspaper there. And it has raised some cries of anti-Semitism.

The young writer expressed his disapproval of students trying to silence other people they disagree with. I don't approve of that either. As long as the the speakers comport themselves like ladies and gentlemen without violence, vandalism or other illegal acts, they should be allowed to speak. But their FA/FOE rights do not include a license to incite riot or murder or other criminal acts.

The writer, Philip Kurian, then criticizes those Jewish students, because he feels that they aren't acting like responsible American adults; instead they're whining like spoiled children. According to Mr. Kurian's thinking, their grandparents or parents may have landed in the U.S. poor and uneducated, but over the past two or three generations their families have been able to succeed, yet these students now persist in claiming they are being oppressed.

Unfortunately, the thrust of Mr. Kurian's criticism, however debatable, may never be taken seriously, because it is couched in a context of sophmoric and crackpot cant.

His failure to use the partitive for the title of his essay alone is a real howler.

And he has made several serious polemic mistakes which severely flaw his credibility.

Moreover, some of his fantasies about "Jewish privileges" are both fictive and obnoxious.

When I graduated high school in 1960, there were still quotas for Jews in place at the admissions offices of American colleges. And, during my freshman year, I actually had an authentic Nazi German professor for one of my classes.

One of my pet peeves is when people try to contradict my life experiences with their imaginations. Don't try to tell me I haven't lived through and experienced what I have been through.

Kurian tosses all kinds of labels around that are intellectual constructs and contends that these labels are actualities.

There is no such thing as "The Jews." Jewish people do not constitute a soccer club like Manchester United or a corporation like the IBM company. And to contend that they do is the height of insanity. There are many diverse enclaves of Jewish people. There are Moroccan Jews in Queens, some Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, German Jews in Washington Heights. And there are numerous Jewish denominations. The Young Israel denomination is quite different from the Satmar denomination. Jewish people do not constitute a monolith.

Nor is there such a thing as "Whites" in the United States. Southern Europeans have never been accepted as "White." Italian people were never regarded as "White." Nor were Eastern Europeans accepted as "Whites." The term "Whites" has been historically used as a code word for WASPS and Northern Europeans only.

These labels are only intellectual constructs; they do not exist in reality.

Kurian even childishly tries to throw in esoteric Jewish philosophy. He seems to believe that the stewardship of this world means that humans are expected to perfect God's creation. Yeah, maybe next week we could get that accomplished!

In the end, whatever sincere attempt Kurian may have made at posing some serious, thought-provoking discussion is buried in there and lost in the swill.

Read it if you must. But try to be thoughtful about it. And try to control any urge to hysterics.

:: KURIAN'S JOOOZ ::

:: Printable Version ::


+ Wattah a weekend!

Hope these entries don't ruin it for ya.

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