The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
September 11, 2002
An American HATE CRIME!! Don't let this crime go unreported! On September 11, 2002, MTV News took over for a 10 minute story detailing a traumatic story about the discrimination faced by Muslems in America. Oh, god, they've come up with a story of an Arab American teenage girl who had to face some hideous hate incident.
After slow, ominous dramatic buildup, it turns out that her great searing oppression, in December of 2001, came from airport security insisting that she remove the sacred religious scarf wrapped from around her head. Really, miss, no fooling, and brought in the National Guard troops on standby to politely insist on compliance. The long detailing of the incident continued- probably longer than the incident itself, coupled with the slow motion graphics. She felt "violated." They made her out like a rape victim. Some nine months later, she's still exorcising the demons from her mistreatment.
Like my hero Elvis, "I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused." Usually that works, but this time I feel it slipping back to me just being good old-fashioned damned disgusted. This is some wealthy Americanized teenaged girl bitching about how traumatized she's been for most of a year over having to take off a damned scarf. Oh, and she's also pissy because a Catholic nun came through, and SHE didn't have to take off her head gear. It's not FAIR.
They're running this on the 9-11 anniversary? Did you not notice that there are people around who have actually had their religions violated perhaps even more substantially than you? I'm almost sure there's a rule in Judaism against being blown to pieces in the middle of the ritual Passover seder, but they're not still bitching about that one. Of course, that may simply be because they've had so many murders and bombings since then that they've lost track. I mean, you had to take off the scarf for inspection at an airport in December 2001?@#? Cry me a river, bitch. Jesus H Criminy.
Surely MTV did not intend to make viewers want to give this child a good Homer Simpson style choking. Nor do I think they intended to make viewers want to pimp slap the ditzy little Asian American Valley Girl who did the "interview." I've probably just committed heinous hate crimes against both of these poor victimized women for what I'm thinking. Surely this was not the response MTV intended, but what other response could a sentient creature have? Could you possibly be more self-absorbed, or more lacking in perspective on the world?
These two little spoiled brats in front of the camera were bad enough, but consider the adults running the show. How assinine must they be? Could they possibly be stupid enough to think this was a worthy example of discrimination? Yet if I were waiting outside the back door with a 2x4 to show the network programmers what an actual civil liberties violation would look like, I would be made out to be the jerk. [Perhaps I should cut back on listening to Merle Haggard.]
Of course, the whole story may have been the network's backward way of assuring us that everything is fine, since this is the worst thing they can come up with to bitch about. Yeah, that must be it. Anger subsiding. Urge to kill fading.
