posted by Winston Smith at
5:23 PM
Saturday, August 26, 2006
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6 Comments:
OK, on the (dubious) assumption that this is true...
It's hard to be surprised by many OBL's pop cultural choices. MacGyver, if suitably indoctrinated, would make a fine terrorist, and everybody - no matter how crazed or hateful - likes "Rock Lobster". The surprise is "The Wonder Years". What is the draw, since most of what that show had to offer was either nostalgia for the time and place, or identification with Fred Savage's character. I just can't picture OBL having either of those. (Winnie: "I like you, I'm just not sure I like you in that way" Fred: "Stop this act. I want to know the real you. Make me something to eat.") Could it be that OBL identifies with Paul? Too puzzled.
Also, while I know in my heart that negotiating with terrorists is wrong, my first reaction to this article was that handing over Bobby Brown would be a small price to pay for an end to all this madness.
J, bro! Are you in Nebraska? North Dakota? Wherever the hell? YOu never call. You never write...
Agreed on at least two points:
1. It's gotta be taken with a grain or so of salt.
2. Handing over Bobby Brown would be a win-win situation.
But I'm sort of more interested in the sex angle. In the U.S. it seems that, no matter what an evil scumbag you are, if it turns out that you're a little pervy, you're ruined. I'm just wondering whether the same thing might go in the Middle East...
In fact, on of my first thoughts about this was that it might be a CIA op... But I don't think we should make too much of that possibility. I'd like folks in the ME to come to believe it even if it's false.
I don't think the type of pervyness that OBL shows in this account would come anywhere to discrediting him in the fundy world. I mean, the sex angle here fits in quite well with the race angle. At several points in the account, the author notes how she is treated as a servant, ridiculed for her black looks, made to dance around naked, so forth. So what we have is the sort idealogy where the black servant woman is not thought of as fully human enough to demand the kind of respect that one might express by marrying, veiling, or sequestering her. (In ancient Babylon, only "free" women wore veils. It weird respect, but that's how it's conceived.) Nor would she be quite human enough to ruin by having sex with her out of wedlock. If you're not ruining her by having sex with her, then you're not doing much wrong. You're certainly not depriving some other muslim man of a virgin bride or faithful wife, which is where the wrongness of the action comes in the thinking of someone like OBL.
Is it a fucked up way of thinking? You bet, but it's not uncommon. OBL would be forgiven by his followers, even if they came to believe the above referrenced account were true.
Still in virginny. I'll call you and Jonny Q sometime soon.
Yeh, I saw that one, WS.
(TVD subscribes to Harper's! Strange but true. What an interesting guy...)
Now, weeks after that republication, it's hit the news, years after the original was published. The entire story is even weirder. Bin Laden is an abusive racist.
It did spur the thought that the Islamicist vanguard (bin Laden, "martyrs") might be vulnerable in Muslim eyes to good ole fashioned Fatty Arbuckle/Jimmy Swaggart western media sliming, because none of us is perfect, and not nearly so.
Viva the National Enquirer! Viva Drudge! Slime is our salvation!
And a good laugh from j.milton on
handing over Bobby Brown would be a small price to pay for an end to all this madness...
Hehe. Also agree on the Muslim mind. Unlike Christianity, one can "earn" one's salvation there by a single and solitary act of will. Big problem.
Yeah, I was thinking that, if the CIA did it, they should have had him degrading an Arab woman.
Anyway, although I've got no problem with most kinds of perviness, I wouldn't be surprised it this story were true, because it would fill out OBL's character in a coherent way. That is: he might be a pure (though nutty) mujahadin...or he might be a freaking sadistic power freak. Both are consistent with what we know about him for sure.
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