Selections from Arab Media Humor

Comment

Embarrassing But Telling:

A columnist on the Alarabiya TV website (July 27) suggested that Secretary of State Condi Rice could mellow her views toward the Middle East and Arabs if she fell in love with some country macho-type Arab, such as a fellah from Upper Egypt or a Syrian peasant. This column elicited a stream of comments in the Alarabiya forum, most of it of the racist type. Hopefully most 'thinking' Arabs do not participate in the forum.

On a similar level, well perhaps on a much lower level, a Fouad Al-Hashim, a portly columnist on the last page of the Kuwaiti conservative daily Al-Watan (July 28) commented on a picture of Secretary Rice standing next to the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzivi Lipni. He made a comparison between Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister, who is blonde and blue-eyed. He said that Secretary Rice looked like one of the Sri-Lankan (Ceylanese) indentured maids, ubiquitous in the Persian Gulf States, while the Israeli Minister looked like her mistress. The fact is, and to stoop close to his intellectual level, in most cases in the Gulf States it is hard to tell the maid from the mistress by complexion alone. I am not so certain about a comparison by intellect either in this case.

So much for the great intellectual minds that populate the Arab media. It is a good thing our leaders do not write newspaper columns.

Cheers
Mohammed