Category: media

A Young Man Gets ‘Filthy Rich’ Boiling, Bottling Tap Water: NPR

i don’t like terry gross. for many reasons. here, i find her sniggering comments and questions to be condescending and pointed. her question to hamid, “have u seen a drone?” is incredible. she seems to talk from the far side of a great cultural divide. in this day and age that’s rather dated and crushingly dull, which is perhaps a good way to describe NPR in general. i like what hamid says at the end about raising his children in the “safest” place. i don’t think she expected a quote from MLK about racism. here’s the entire quote:

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your 6-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a 5-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. (Martin Luther King Jr)

Interview here.

media and popular culture

march 12, 2013: i was invited to speak about “media and popular culture” to high school students at the global citizenship conference at nazareth college today. i used photographs and videos to showcase the power of media in shaping our thinking. there were about 25 students in my class and they were sharp. we talked about latino stereotypes and the overwhelming reference to illegal immigration and they immediately threw NAFTA at me. they recognized iconic images representing the great depression, the civil rights movement, the vietnam war, and abu ghraib. i confronted them with two pictures of afghan women, one taken in 1985 (during the soviet occupation) and the other taken in 2010 (during the american occupation) and they were able to piece together the political messages they convey, ever so subtly. i showed them kiri davis’ “black doll, white doll” and some of jack shaheen’s “reel bad arabs.” they were totally with it. so what about the zoned out, self absorbed, barely literate american high school kid? just a media stereotype. trust me.

How to deal with a mansplainer starring Hillary Clinton in gifs

so this video has become viral and my feminist friends r posting about how proud they r of hillary. no mention of what she’s actually saying – which is completely moronic. her point is that after americans were killed in benghazi it wasn’t a priority to find out why they were killed. she just wanted to bring the culprits to justice and make sure that something like that would never ever happen again. dear manslayer of mansplainers, how do u propose to stop the killing of americans if u will never stoop to the level of understanding the cause and fixing that problem? what’s so “feminist” about brainless brawn and empty posturing? the thing is, the boys club is race and gender neutral. capitalist warmongering is key. it’s not like these hearings mean anything anyway. her “smack down” would make more sense if she stood for something, if what she was saying had any substance. not so impressed with the hand movements only.

november 16, 2012

my thoughts today: this is so scripted it isn’t even corny. escalating violence in order to provoke a reaction then exaggerating that reaction in order to simulate a state of war. one of the best equipped armies in the world funded by the only super power in the world vs a besieged civilian population on a minimum calorie diet for the last 6 yrs? u must be kidding me. hysterical israeli woman coddled by IDF soldier vs men squeezing the charred remains of their children against their bodies? seriously? i want to cry and puke at the same time. what a fucked up world we live in.

Power of passion

i’ve always found the pakistani newspaper “dawn” to be disturbing in its greedy embrace of american imperialism. now i’m more sure than ever that dawn is just a sad pakistani version of the NYT. i commented on this article “power of passion” by dawn’s correspondent in brussels. her writing lacks context and i tried to provide that in my comment. interestingly enough, even tho the editors felt comfortable publishing all the comments u see under the article, they chose not to publish mine. here it is anyway.
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it would help not to talk about a film only. there is always more context, more historical continuity than what western media will concede. the invasion and decades long occupation of muslim countries matters. the detention w/o trial and torture of muslim bodies matters. the film is just the last straw, the last insult but it’s not the whole story. it’s “the playground bully calling your mother a slut after already breaking your jaw, and then wondering why you can’t take a joke” as michael muhammad knight said. what about the 8 afghan women who were recently killed in a US-NATO airstrike? what kind of “rage” was that? christian? western? imperialist? it’s not a level playing field – some violence is more normalized than other. also, there is a strong distinction b/w free speech and hate speech. the denigration of a group of people on the basis of their religion and ethnicity is not protected by law. the campaign to dehumanize muslims is not random – it’s not the work of independent artists or political activists. it’s coming from a well-established network that finances people like pamela geller and daniel pipes and funds ads such as the ones that ran on san francisco buses which said: “in any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man” followed by “support israel. defeat jihad.” so these things go a bit deeper than “the film that roiled muslims.” max blumenthal has exposed many of these connections in his incredible work. everyone should check it out here.

Syria Is Iraq

o m g. the man is insane. can’t believe he can write for any newspaper at all (even the nyt) after belen fernandez demolished him unequivocally, irreversibly, permanently.
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And Iraq was such a bitter experience for America that we prefer never to speak of it again. But Iraq is relevant here. The only reason Iraq has any chance for a decent outcome today is because America was on the ground with tens of thousands of troops to act as that well-armed midwife, reasonably trusted and certainly feared by all sides, to manage Iraq’s transition to more consensual politics. My gut tells me that Syria will require the same to have the same chance. (Thomas Friedman)
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More of Friedman’s imperial garbage, packaged in folksy, easy to ingest imperial lies and arrogance, here.

summer walks…

walks by the erie canal with my husband, almost every day, all summer long when we’re in pittsford (he took this picture).

walks by the erie canal
walks by the erie canal

are u mom enough

on the time magazine story (are u mom enough) that everyone’s talking about: i don’t have any problems with pictures of mothers breastfeeding their kids, even if their kids r toddlers, but i do have a problem with the pressure that’s implicit in these national discussions on perfect motherhood. the women featured in the story have not only been nursing their kids for years but they’ve obviously been drinking kale shakes and working out religiously. i haven’t read the entire article yet but i’m sure that they’re also the CEOs of profitable companies. it’s that kind of societal vision of what it means to be a super-woman that i find v narrow and misguided. leave women alone. let them make their own choices about what they choose to wear, how they choose to mate and what motherhood means to them. harper’s magazine did a great story in their march issue. it’s called “the tyranny of breast-feeding: new mothers vs. la leche league.” the article talks about the v political basis of the breastfeeding debate (money and propaganda r involved obviously) and should be required reading for all women. there is no “picture” of perfect motherhood – every woman has to figure it out for herself.

Wallace interview with Ahmadinejad was little more than deliberate demonization

“Rather than allow Ahmadinejad to speak for himself, Wallace and his production team at CBS decided to create their own narrative, shaped by decontextualized quotes, selective editing, and subjective voice-overs by the renowned interviewer. As a result, the interview that aired was little more than deliberate demonization, anti-Iranian propaganda, and purposefully obfuscated what the Iranian President had actually said to his interlocutor in order to further propagate a false narrative of an Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel and which officially denies the Holocaust.”
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As a result of this undeniable censorship and intentional obfuscation of truth in service of propaganda by a mainstream media outlet and respected reporter, Mike Wallace won his 21st Emmy Award for the Ahmadinejad interview. More here.
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To be fair to Wallace, here is what he said when he himself was interviewed by Sean Hannity on the topic:

MW: He (Ahmadinejead) is not trying to project an image. Look, it’s very difficult. I know…I found it difficult to understand, but the more that I sat there, and the more time that I spent with the man, he is…I’m not suggesting…he despises, if you will…oh, he doesn’t despise, but he doesn’t like the United States. He doesn’t like the United States for the reason that it’s supporting the Zionist entity. He doesn’t talk about Israel.
SH: So you don’t think he’s an anti-Semite?
MW: He himself, an anti-Semite, an anti-Jew…anti-Jew?
SH: Yes.
MW: No, I don’t.
MW: I am with you 100% in what I perceived to be the individual that I was about to sit down and talk to. And he made his case, fairly rationally. It wasn’t…it was a conversation. He did not propagandize and so forth. He…when I began to talk to him about America, about the United States, and oppression, he had his facts down solid about why he feels sorry, he says, for President Bush. Why? And then he starts in about the polls of President Bush, and how they’re going down, and how he’s going to leave office, and it’s sad that he’s going to leave office and leave behind a people who don’t really approve of him. His approval ratings are what they are. And what is the standing of the United States in the world generally under President Bush. And it’s…we weren’t having an argument. I mean, we were having a discussion. And he was infinitely more rational than I had expected him to be.
SH: And would you deny, Mike, for example, if you ever sat down with Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin…
MW: (laughing)
SH: Oh, wait. Hang on.
MW: No, look, I couldn’t agree with you more.
SH: Would they seem, perhaps, informed, smart, reasonable, even though they were evil?
MW: Well, it’s a perfectly sensible question. As far as I am…Adolf Hitler? Good Lord. I mean, the man was such a hateful, hateful man.
SH: So is Ahmadinejead, Mike. Listen to his statements.
MW: What…running a Holocaust, which the Iranians have not done, as you know, running a Holocaust, doing that sort of thing, slaughtering six million Jews, that’s not what this man is talking about doing.
SH: But Mike, but let me answer that. Mike, but his statements are such that he wants to go beyond that. His statements are annihilate, wipe off the Earth.
MW: No, no, no.
SH: The world.
MW: Hold it, hold it.
SH: Wipe off the map.
MW: Yes, he says wipe off the map, and of course I asked him over and over about that. He says in effect, hey, it’s perfectly sensible to do…pardon me. It’s perfectly sensible for them, and I’m not quoting directly, obviously, because I don’t have the translation in front of me, to…for them to…it’s perfectly sensible, if there is a Holocaust, and let’s buy the fact that there was a Holocaust. Where did the Holocaust take place? Did it take place in an Arab neighborhood? Did it take place in Jerusalem? No. It took place in Germany. Then it seems to me, under those circumstances, take Israel, the Zionist entity, he called it, move it to Germany. Move it to Europe. That’s where it happened.
SH: Do you agree with him?
MW: Move it to the United States.
SH: Do you think that’s a legitimate argument?
MW: It’s an argument. I’m not a commentator. You are.
SH: You think he’s a better man than we think? Do you think he’s a good man?
MW: I wouldn’t call him a good man, no. I think that he’s a more reasonable…he’s self-assured. He is self-righteous. He is savvy. He has studied. Do you know what he does? He has a PhD in civil engineering. And…
SH: Well, he certainly won’t let his people be free. There’s not the freedom…
MW: What does that mean, free?
SH: Well, I would argue that women…
MW: Are you suggesting that he wasn’t elected by his people?
SH: I don’t believe that those elections are honest in any way. No, I do not.
MW: Well, all I can tell you is…
SH: I believe if there was an honest election, people would…
MW: Khamenei, who is the supreme leader, really, in Iran, if there’s one man to whom this man, Ahma…you pronounce his name better than I do…that the president of Iran defers to, it is the man who they call the supreme leader, who is the ayatollah, the highest ayatollah. 27 years ago, I went to the holy city of Qum to talk to Khomenei, which is one of the reasons, I’m sure, that they decided that they were going to let me talk, or he was going to let me talk. I know that I am making him sound more human, more surely than I expected, and by all means, more human than you feel that he is. You feel that he’s dead evil, and there’s no doubt about it, and so forth. What you’re telling me is that some of your best friends are Jews, is that it? That’s not what I’m saying. He says, let the people who were responsible for the Holocaust, let the Zionists go there and establish their state.
MW: I think that Khomenei…Khomenei was much more, how to say, hard-minded, much more the kind of man that you’re describing than Ahma…
SH: Ahmadinejead.
MW: Ahmadinejead, correct, is. The…I ask you to bring not prejudice, not your own beliefs or prejudices. When you watch him, I’ll be curious to see whether you think that there’s anything reasonable about this man at all.