Ah Angry Arab. For every good piece he writes (his last one about mainstream media for example), he must counterbalance with a really offensive one just to prove he is “balanced”. I really don’t understand how a tenured professor who teaches at a prestigious American university doesn’t understand why Ben Ali and Mubarak were more “humble” in their last days while Gadaffi and Bashar were “oddly defiant” and “arrogant” . Erm, I don’t know Angry person, could it be that the latt
er enjoyed popular support and hence didn’t need to grovel? Could it be Ben Ali and Mubarak weren’t threatened with a NATO invasion which is what accounts for the defiant attitude of Gadaffi and Bashar? And what’s with Angry’s resorting to mainstream media’s propaganda techniques like psycho-pathologizing Arab leaders, which plays into the Orientalist discourse on the White Man’s presumed rationality? It was Angry Arab who popularized the concept of the “White Man” in the English-speaking Arab vernacular. Angry Arab was much better than this. Much, much better. Shame really.
Excerpts:
“But he comes across as supercilious and arrogant: he speaks with the over-confidence of someone who thinks he is the smartest person in the room, or in the hall, or in the city, or maybe on the planet. If you evaluate Bashar’s performance, you can’t escape the conclusion that he was less humbled by the uprising than other Arab leaders were. Ben Ali was quite humbled and he started to beg the people to keep him in power. Gaddafi can’t be judged as a rational person and his behavior under pressure was oddly defiant and provocative. Mubarak stayed arrogant but addressed the people – perhaps under pressure from the generals. Bashar only addressed the people a few times.”
Excerpts:
“But he comes across as supercilious and arrogant: he speaks with the over-confidence of someone who thinks he is the smartest person in the room, or in the hall, or in the city, or maybe on the planet. If you evaluate Bashar’s performance, you can’t escape the conclusion that he was less humbled by the uprising than other Arab leaders were. Ben Ali was quite humbled and he started to beg the people to keep him in power. Gaddafi can’t be judged as a rational person and his behavior under pressure was oddly defiant and provocative. Mubarak stayed arrogant but addressed the people – perhaps under pressure from the generals. Bashar only addressed the people a few times.”
-
resistance-episteme posted this
