Someone asked me how come I’m on the road so much this fall when I’m supposed to be teaching creative writing at UC Riverside. Short answer: I asked for (and received) a course reduction in the fall, so I will not be unleashed onto students until the winter quarter. Poor things.
Monica Ali wrote a piece for the Guardian in which she derides the media (including the newspaper that published her article) for giving so much attention to the handful of people who protested the making of her book into a film. Here’s a very quotable excerpt:
As seems to be the way with these things, press coverage began (in this newspaper) with the reporting of the views of a couple of self-appointed “community leaders”. I love it when a journalist does this. I think of him stumbling around Tower Hamlets, waving a notebook and echoing the old colonial cry from down the ages: take me to your leader.
Of course, writers who have ancestral roots in Muslim nations are used to this: Any kind of a protest over a supposedly offensive book is blown way out of proportion in the West, and the author turned into a martyr, whether she likes it or not.
See also:
Department of WTF.
Tempest in a Teacup.
Following the legislative elections of September 2007 in Morocco (which, while generally transparent, had low levels of voter turnout) the new government has been announced. The new Prime Minister is Abbas El Fassi, of the Istiqlal Party.
Mr. Abbas El Fassi is perhaps best remembered by the young people of Morocco as the man who, in his capacity as Minister of Employment in 2002 was responsible for the Al Najat fiasco. At least one person has committed suicide in the aftermath of that scandal. Abbas El Fassi is also the man who, earlier this year, was quoted in Tel Quel magazine as saying that the efforts to promote Darija Arabic in Morocco are part of a conspiracy by the francophone elite to hurt the unity of the Arab peoples. (Rien que ça? one is tempted to say.)
Several ministers have no party affiliation (Chakib Benmoussa, Taieb Fassi Fihri, Ahmed Toufiq, et al.), and are technocrats chosen for their experience in the private sector, and in that sense the country will continue to be managed as it has in previous iterations.
This new government is quite remarkable, however, for its record number of women ministers: Ms. Amina Benkhadra (Energy & Mines); Ms. Yasmina Baddou (Health); Ms. Nawal El Moutawakil (Sports); Ms. Nouzha Skalli (Family); Ms. Touria Jabrane (Culture); Ms. Latifa Labida (liaison to National Education); and Ms. Latifa Akherbach (liaison to Foreign Affairs).
I think I am going to take a day off from reading news, and instead I am going to spend my day with Francisco Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder.