March 14, 2004

HELLHOLE

Amritas pointed to a comment on LGF that really made me mad. An Israeli family was in a New Mexico bookstore speaking Hebrew to each other when an American woman overheard them:

Suddenly the other mother said to my girls 'wow what a beautiful language ! What is that?" Eden innocently and very cutely told her " its Hebrew.. we're visiting from Israel" this womans smile vanished and she gave them a blank stare, said " oh. really." and than.... started telling her partner" do you know, I am going to start taking that Arabic language course,, it has a really cool Palestinian teacher, and I think it will be really broadening to learn it, blah blah;ah blah;ah" very very loudly. I was shocked.

The first thing I thought of when I read this was that Point-Counterpoint on Nigeria from The Onion. The American kid is envious of the rich cultural Nigerian heritage, and the Nigerian simply says, "Get me out of this godforsaken hellhole." It's a wonderful parody of how Americans multiculturalize everything and truly don't understand the vicious struggle that goes on in other countries.

I got a new button yesterday for my sidebar: I'm a Proud Friend of Israel. If I had been in that bookstore in NM, I think I would've beat that woman with a sack of Valencia oranges.

Idiotarianism makes me violent.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:13 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

1 We have so many things in this country that we somply take for granted. You've mentioned before how Americans react to you living overseas, and how wonderful that must be. Everything else is "so exotic." Yes, and everyone else in the world lives at a level considered middle-class to them that the poor people here would turn down.

Posted by: Mike at March 14, 2004 01:15 PM (AcqBI)

2 Welllllllll, to be fair, I still haven't gotten over the fact that I was once called a "dirty Gentile" (seriously) by a Jew at UT-Austin because I know how to read, if not speak, Hebrew since it's central to what I study (Hebrew is probably the main language of the occult--a fact of which J.K. Rowling is evidently unaware with her Latin spells...heh). He then had the arrogance to ask me if I knew that my name was Hebrew. I laughed and even gave him the proper pronunciation (Yirmeyahu) and meaning. As you well know, I'm a "proud friend of Israel" as well, but I have to admit that a few of them do seem to *try* to alienate those who would be their friends. I didn't tell him that I'm 1/4 Jewish by blood, if not by religion: that probably would have *really* set him off. And that's not the first time it has happened--but my dislike of the other side is strong enough to keep me from even thinking about supporting the Palestinians because of some stupid thing like that (cf. my earlier entry on gay marriages vs. Islamism). And besides, being a next door neighbor to New Mexico, I know that many of the people who live there (as much as I love the state in general) are head-up-in-the-clouds liberals. It was indeed, excessive, especially with the Palestinian comments, but I really expect nothing less from most of them. They're out there finding "enlightenment" and all that, you know. (Where have you gone, William H. Bonney?) And, a barely related rant: I'm so tired about hearing about others' "rich" heritages: we're a nation made up of nations--how much richer can you get? Plus, we've made our own culture--it's just so embedded that none of us see it (which is probably true for those elsewhere).

Posted by: Jeremiah at March 14, 2004 02:18 PM (l1RuK)

3 they're alienating themselves...time for a good ole hangin...

Posted by: chadsmom at May 09, 2004 02:48 AM (FF/TG)

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