Monday, May 16, 2005
MNR
You - you got what I need.
But you say he's just a friend.
You say he's just a friend.
A friend of a friend recently traveled to Egypt, our good friends in the northeast of the African continent. Not only was this friend a female, she had the double misfortune of being Jewish. Needless to say this particular person encountered some difficulties in the land of the pharoahs. Merchants who had previously bargained with her husband seemed less inclined to deal. Evidently all Egyptian males have the mentality of a typical American teenager and seem incapable of standing in the presence of women. So this woman - a self-described feminist - had a natural explanation for this boorish behavior: it was all a result of British colonialism.
That's right. As we all have read in our history textbooks the Brits were notorious for their second-class treatment of women. It's not as though any British women have been allowed to attain any positions of prominence, other than of course being head of state. And we're all familiar with the headscarves that British women are required to wear, and the generally subservient position that they must all accept. Before the Brits arrived Egyptian women flourished, but it was those nasty Brits that taught Egyptian men the virtue of misogyny.
It's amazing really. American leftists (and Andrew Sullivan, not there's a distinction there anymore) bemoan the phantom rise of the theocrats. You know, they're those crazy nutbags who believe in all sorts of hokey nonsense like the son of God and going to Church every week. According to the left these "theocrats," who by the way represent both fundamentalist Christians and Roman Catholics, are engaged in some nefarious plot to take over America. Let's let alone the fact that Fundies and Catholics agree on little more than that Christ was in fact the Son of God and therefore the Messiah. Hey it's not like Fundies disagree with Catholics on such petty things such as transubstantiation and the literal interpretation of the bible. Obviously since we all believe that Christ is the risen Lord we must all share the same basic worldview, except for those cases where we don't. Hey, just because most Fundies think that all Catholics are going to hell couldn't possibly mean there's any dissonance between these two groups. Just like Jews have managed to organize in a plot to take over the world even though they can't effectively organize to arrange a smooth-flowing Shabbot service, let's not let pesky facts get in the way of a ridiculously stupid characterization of the so-called "Christian right."
Where were we? Oh right. Somehow it's these Christian theocrats that present a threat to the world and the American way of life. But as mentioned below it ain't the Christians rioting and murdering over alleged desecrations of holy documents. It ain't the Christian societies that won't allow their women to show their faces in public, drive cars, or vote. And before January there was only one Middle Eastern society that functioned as a democracy, and it wasn't the state in which the official religion was the one adhered to by most Middle Easterners.
Yet despite the incredibly inhumane treatment of an entire gender our noble feminist decides to deride western culture and pin the blame on a society that was ahead of its time in its sex relations. It is as though a left-winger knows not what to do. Sure, Middle Eastern men treat their women like complete shit, but they hate America, and in the end, isn't America hating more important than the equal treatment of women?
But you say he's just a friend.
You say he's just a friend.
A friend of a friend recently traveled to Egypt, our good friends in the northeast of the African continent. Not only was this friend a female, she had the double misfortune of being Jewish. Needless to say this particular person encountered some difficulties in the land of the pharoahs. Merchants who had previously bargained with her husband seemed less inclined to deal. Evidently all Egyptian males have the mentality of a typical American teenager and seem incapable of standing in the presence of women. So this woman - a self-described feminist - had a natural explanation for this boorish behavior: it was all a result of British colonialism.
That's right. As we all have read in our history textbooks the Brits were notorious for their second-class treatment of women. It's not as though any British women have been allowed to attain any positions of prominence, other than of course being head of state. And we're all familiar with the headscarves that British women are required to wear, and the generally subservient position that they must all accept. Before the Brits arrived Egyptian women flourished, but it was those nasty Brits that taught Egyptian men the virtue of misogyny.
It's amazing really. American leftists (and Andrew Sullivan, not there's a distinction there anymore) bemoan the phantom rise of the theocrats. You know, they're those crazy nutbags who believe in all sorts of hokey nonsense like the son of God and going to Church every week. According to the left these "theocrats," who by the way represent both fundamentalist Christians and Roman Catholics, are engaged in some nefarious plot to take over America. Let's let alone the fact that Fundies and Catholics agree on little more than that Christ was in fact the Son of God and therefore the Messiah. Hey it's not like Fundies disagree with Catholics on such petty things such as transubstantiation and the literal interpretation of the bible. Obviously since we all believe that Christ is the risen Lord we must all share the same basic worldview, except for those cases where we don't. Hey, just because most Fundies think that all Catholics are going to hell couldn't possibly mean there's any dissonance between these two groups. Just like Jews have managed to organize in a plot to take over the world even though they can't effectively organize to arrange a smooth-flowing Shabbot service, let's not let pesky facts get in the way of a ridiculously stupid characterization of the so-called "Christian right."
Where were we? Oh right. Somehow it's these Christian theocrats that present a threat to the world and the American way of life. But as mentioned below it ain't the Christians rioting and murdering over alleged desecrations of holy documents. It ain't the Christian societies that won't allow their women to show their faces in public, drive cars, or vote. And before January there was only one Middle Eastern society that functioned as a democracy, and it wasn't the state in which the official religion was the one adhered to by most Middle Easterners.
Yet despite the incredibly inhumane treatment of an entire gender our noble feminist decides to deride western culture and pin the blame on a society that was ahead of its time in its sex relations. It is as though a left-winger knows not what to do. Sure, Middle Eastern men treat their women like complete shit, but they hate America, and in the end, isn't America hating more important than the equal treatment of women?
# posted by Paul Zummo : 10:13 PM
