I work with a guy who is convinced Obama is a militant Muslim with direct ties to an anti-American mosque in London. He knows this, cuz someone sent him an e-mail saying it was so. In other news, we saw Batman : The Dark Knight yesterday. It is very good, but I wouldn't put a label like "best ever" on it. A more-detailed review to follow.
7 comments:
Your coworker sounds like my grandmother.
i have at least five dittohead co-workers. all of which are sure, if they just keep inundating me with idiotic Rush-inspired e-mails, that i'll eventually start to believe them.
Yeah, after my grandmother sent me an email about how Muslims were exactly like Nazis, I finally told her I found them offensive and asked her to take me off the mailing list. You'd think she'd know better than to send that stuff to me - my sister got married to a Palestinian refugee in February and my brother and I were over on the West Bank to be there with her when she did. Her husband is Muslim, and he's a really great guy. Kept us laughing the whole time I was over there.
maybe you've already discussed this on your blog, but what'd you think of the West Bank people as a whole? a bunch of radicals; or just plain-old regular people?
a couple years ago, i spent a week on mainland China. everybody thinks the Red Chinese are brainwashed. they aren't. they're just like us, and their children are just as delightfully happy as ours are.
I had to of course go through Israel to get in and out of the West Bank, and then we visited Jerusalem as well. What I learned were the Isralis were rude, arrogant bullies, to everyone, and everyone I met on the West Bank was exceedingly kind. Now I know part of that is part of their welcoming culture and that some of the veneer of that goes away after awhile, but my sister has lived in different parts of the middle east (west bank and Yemen, specifically) for two years, and she still thinks the same thing as me. I was surprised. I figured I'd find both cultures to be normal. Instead, I found I really disliked everyone I met in Israel and loved everyone in Palestine. They were just so generous, kind, forthcoming, giving, and caring. They wanted to give us tons of things, and they made me want to give something back. While I was there, I was able to help one of my brother in law's neices with a skin condition she'd had for years. She couldn't afford the medicine to fix it, but it's something I've suffereed from my whole life (it was just an odd form of eczema that doesn't heal with regular lotion treatments), so I knew exactly what medicine to get for her. I was overjoyed to be able to do it.
And I felt dreadful for them, beause the conditions they live in over ther are horrible, but when you drive through Israel, it's like driving through rich parts of America. It's disgusting to see all the terrible things the Isralis do to the Palestinians, I got to witness things. This is the country we support in the US...sigh...I think people over here just don't realize.
did you ever read Richard North Patterson's book "Exile"? IMO, it is a nice, balanced look at the Israel/Palestine situation.
Nah, I haven't. I read (and reviewed) The Bookseller of Kabul awhile back and am now reading Kabul Beauty School. The situation in the middle east is painful and interesting and I hate when people capitalize on western fears. As you'll have seen if you've read the review on the book mentioned above.
Post a Comment