Category: the petri dish

There’s been a lot of talk on the net about people’s reactions to Fahrenheit 9/11, about how much money it made, and about how factual it was. There was even discussion about how the movie may have affected sales of anti-Bush books. But I was wondering how much the movie will really affect the average, undecided American.

Well, the average American doesn’t read books, doesn’t watch documentaries at theatres, and doesn’t vote. So when Joe Schmo sees this movie, will he side with Moore and want to vote the current administration out of office? Or will he agree with people like Hitch that the movie is so much “liberal propaganda” and vote for Bush?

So I went with an average american who subscribes to the above three “doesn’ts”. While in line, I asked whether or not he was going to vote in the next election. “I really don’t know, I wasn’t planning on it.” And let’s just say that his opinion didn’t change after watching the movie. Maybe his answer would have been different if Arnold was running for President.

A depressing experiment. I know my own Joe Schmo is only one data point, so for now I’ll hold my judgment until after the election, and try to keep the faith.

Some Wall Street Journal reporters began withholding their bylines from stories in Wednesday editions, part of a planned two-day protest after contract negotiations soured with their employer, Dow Jones & Co.

More about the protest.

Mohja Kahf is interviewed over at Nerve.

What about homosexuality?
In contemporary Muslim culture, there is pretty much no space for that range of experience. What many Muslims don’t understand is that the contemporary take on Islam is so much more intolerant than it was in previous eras of Islamic history. In the eighth century, an openly omnisexual poet wrote very explicit poetry and was given a place in court. In the eleventh century, Ibn Hazm in Islamic Spain wrote a love treatise that goes on and on about kinds of love, including same-sex.

Read the interview here. Kahf is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman and E-mails from Scheherazad.

Another Control Room review. Check out the documentary’s web page to find out when it comes out near you.

Although the L.A. Weekly‘s cover story this week is ostensibly about Control Room, Jehane Noujaim’s documentary on Al-Jazeera, the documentary itself gets only a brief mention. Mostly, Brendan Bernhard’s subject is Samir Khader, a senior Al-Jazeera producer, who was interviewed extensively in Control Room, and who was in the U.S. recently to talk to the press about the documentary. (This isn’t noted in the article, but I should mention here that other people featured in Control Room, including Lieutenant Josh Rushing, are also doing press for the film*.)

Bernhard’s article is quite informative, though at times it seemed all too willing to espouse the Administration’s official party line about the network. For instance, quotes that are even remotely favorable to Al-Jazeera are qualified, but those that aren’t are presented without context. Thus the liberal tendencies of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole (Informed Content) are mentioned in connection with someone who defends some of Al-Jazeera’s programs. However, Fouad Ajami’s quote that the Arab news network is a “dangerous force” is wheeled out without any mention of the esteemed professor’s well-known conservative tendencies, or his role as an informal advisor to both Bush administrations.

But perhaps most disturbing of all is Bernhard’s assumptions about what Khader is thinking when he turns down an invitation for a stroll.

I offered to take him to the top of the Empire State Building, but he seemed uninterested in doing any conventional sightseeing. Perhaps he was afraid I’d also suggest a trip to what naughty Ann Coulter dubbed the greatest monument to Islam in New York: Ground Zero. At any rate, he seemed happy just to walk around.

I hadn’t realized that L.A. Weekly reporters had acquired mind-reading abilities.

Later, Bernhard demands to know why Arabs didn’t help in planning for post-Saddam Iraq. Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that the Bush Administration didn’t build a broad pre-war or post-war coalition. Instead, let’s see the reasoning behind such demands:

If you dont mind my saying so, I said, it sounds like you’re playing games. It sounds like there’s an opportunity for democracy there, and you’re not taking it. It’s as if you’re saying, I like this gift, but I dont like the way its wrapped, I don’t like the store you bought it from, and the owner of the store killed my uncle.

Not quite. The correct analogy would be if someone gave you a gift you wanted but then demanded the birthday cake in return. Although, really, neither of these is actually a fair analogy because they’re both based on the assumption that democracy is the ultimate goal, which, strategically speaking, it isn’t. If you really believe that the Bush Administration’s ultimate goal is to bring democracy to the Middle-East then you must be living in la-la-land. But the capper has to be this:

Though hailing from a part of the world lined wall to wall with dictatorships, he felt at liberty to criticize every infringement of a democracy that provides many Arabs with a completely free life they could never receive in their countries of origin.

Ah, the whole “Love it or leave it” line. I’m sure the founding fathers would have been proud.

*Update: Oops, looks like Rushing has been ordered not to talk. (Link via Maud.)

Stand-up comic Tissa Hami, whose act includes cracking airport jokes while wearing an Islamic Hijab, has put up the lyrics to her Ramadan Song on her website (to be sung to the tune of Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song, of course.)