Airmiles

Lol.

Actually, these two topics should be given to American high school students. That would make more sense.

I am a big fan of the one where he suggests that George W Bush ought to spend a trillion dollars on a project to invent a substitute for petroleum, raising the strong suspicion in my mind that Friedman has never been to Texas.

Contrariwise:

Why do you believe the capitalist-caucasian world is capable of offering spiritual fulfilment, and how do you envisage it coming about through peaceful changes inside your country, without any Islamic or other outside help?

That’s peaceful, Falwellian nutjobs!

Falwell isn’t such a nutjob when compared to say, Sheik Yousuf Qaradhawi. Falwell and Qaradhawi would probably agree with the premise that homosexuality corrupts culture. But the Falwell/Qaradhawi love fest would end when the religious talks came to wife beating and jihad/crusades and the importance of secular education along with religious education.

It is also quite amusing to see that Falwell would condemn the word “crusade” while Qaradhawi often uses the word “jihad”, even though the two words are the flip side of each other.

If Hollywood is at the forefront of promoting Western values, then we are in deep trouble. Most people in the West understand that Hollywood is mostly amoral and serves to entertain and only very rarely to instruct.

If Hollywood is at the forefront of promoting Western values, then we are in deep trouble.

Hollywood is almost entirely market driven. In terms of ideology, entertainment, and wish-fulfilment, it is the most accurate representative of Western values (insofar such a monolithic concept actually exists). If you have a problem with its content, you have a problem with the majority of your fellow Westerners.

Hollywood’s actually pretty successful. I’d wager that a greater percentage of the world’s population obtains its image of the West (and desire to emigrate to same) from Hollywood movies, than from (say) Steven Den Beste’s painstakingly written libertarian expositions on USS Clueless.

Jet’s not too far off. An essay contest seems like a particularly dumb “airmiles” idea, but I for one don’t find much to object to in this:

I sort of like the idea of bin Laden sitting in a dark cave somewhere, composing his latest nutty video message, and suddenly learning that all the reward money we were devoting to killing him will go instead to killing his ideas – and to bringing young Arabs and Muslims closer to America rather than pushing them farther away.

Maybe not so much promoting positive Western ideas (although I suppose his second essay topic implies that), but refuting negative strains of Islamic thought.

It is also quite amusing to see that Falwell would condemn the word “crusade”

was that before or after he called Mohammed a “terrorist” ?

sorry about the double. the first one gave me a 500 error, then i checked (twice) to make sure it didn’t go through before i tried again. apparently it did.

_The winners would be awarded visas and four-year scholarships to any accredited university in America to which they could gain acceptance. The winning essays would be posted on the Web in English, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and French. What do you think would make America more secure? Rewarding one person for turning in bin Laden or putting thousands of young Arabs and Muslims through American schools?_

The fool! Doesn’t he realise that this would only bring them into contact with hate-filled leftist academics(tm) who would singlehandedly turn them into marxist imperialist godless commie islamofascisterroids?

Why does Thomas Friedman hate America?

Cleek, that is an interesting way to judge morals. It had never occured to me to equate name calling for agitating for religious warfare. After all, adding that word “religious” in front of “warfare” is usually what you do right before you discuss the most brutal horrific inter-cultural wars. As for the name calling, I’m not so sure Mohammed cares what Falwell said about him, sticks and stones…

Let me guess: Friedman got this idea from a cab driver, didn’t he?

What a yutz.

But the reality is that most cultures don’t ascribed so much moral inferiority to their wealthiest members as does the West. We all want to be rich, but the rich are a bunch of underserving pigs, right?

Really?

I’d say personally that the exact opposite is the case. The idea that a wealthy person was not necessarily always a corrupt, kleptocratic, morally inferior, undeserving pig was one I first encountered here in the West.

“If Hollywood is at the forefront of promoting Western values, then we are in deep trouble.”

Well Hollywood gave us Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Arnold Swhatznegger (whatever), Shane, John Rambo, etc, et al.

Any problems with them, jet?

Jesus, what country does “Jet” live in? In the USA, where I live, the rich are worshipped like gods. Turn on the “Apprentice” to see dozens of people bow and scrape to the stunningly uncharismatic Donald Trump, a lousy businessman who has gone bankrupt multiple times but kept his fortune by being “too rich to fail”.

In keeping with the spirit of the author of this post, let me suggest that each essay contest winner, in addition to being awarded and all-expenses-paid American college education, also gets a pony.

Well, it’s not unheard of for people to get an all-expenses-paid American college education(also ponies, but you get the point).

The more obvious pony joke, I thought, was

Tom Friedman:
I sort of like the idea of bin Laden sitting in a dark cave somewhere, composing his latest nutty video message, and suddenly learning that all the reward money we were devoting to killing him will go instead to killing his ideas…

…and also, everybody’s getting a pony.

jet-
Oh we are in deep trouble, we are.
“Hollywood” is raising its third-and-a-halfth generation of American children. The young adults of its second-and-a-halfth are in Iraq playing video games with human lives.
–
There may be nothing wrong with “Hollywood” promoting “Democracy” in the abstract, but in the concrete real it reminds me of the mass brainwash that’s been used to make tobacco a pariah commodity in middle-class America.
That was accomplished, most successfully, using the same techniques that were applied to the viewing public to get them hooked to begin with. Celebrity endorsements, product placement, and image saturation – spun through the mirror and turned into negative reinforcement exercises.
The bizarre and patently false message being that individual repsonsibility was all that was in play. At the same time subliminal coercion was battering at the entrenched acceptability of smoking. Effectively.
Individual responsibility plus the sleep-tape hypnotics of moral brainwashing being the key there.
My somewhat clearer and much shorter point being – no message comes unattended.
Every public service message, even the most benign, is a commercial for public service messages generally, and for the media and style used to produce it, and for the social context of its makers. “Hollywood” is a commercial for itself, first of all.

I read anna in cario’s blog when it was sponored on blogspots list of blogs of the day. Fascinating virtually running into her again. Great blog btw.