CULTURAL BIGOTS

 

Why do imperialists force their own cultural imperatives on the people they colonize and the lands they occupy?  France, Spain and England all did it wherever they went.  Americans were originally proud to be “a melting pot” for diverse cultures (if you can ignore the poor native Indians) settling there.

America has disowned those roots as the identity of its people has become more standardized. Now, not only do Americans expect other Americans to behave uniformly or at least homogeneously, they expect other cultures to conform to the “American way of life”.

America and the UK have even gone so far as to invade and occupy another country by deception in order to force a Western style democracy on the populace.  With other countries and cultures, America regularly indulges in extortionist tricks to get them to perform the homeland song and dance.  Following the example of the Mafia, America offers protection to those who comply and it punishes the holdouts.

American cultural impositions have become so established that a journalist like Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times recently insisted that Arab women should change the way they dress.  "Pointing and jeering" at customary Arab women's dress codes, he revealed how possessed Americans have become by a provincial ignorance framed by colossal arrogance. 

In his gross disdain for the Arab woman's preference for respectful cover over various stages of Western undress, Kristof revealed a degenerate mentality matching the moral turpitude of his own cultural milieu.

Looking westward as Arabs do when watching TV, or seeing western women when they travel, Arab women choose not to "show my legs and breasts to men" as one Saudi woman told Kristof.  That wasn't enough for this New York Times Voice of America. His provincial pride at a show and tell of tits and ass everywhere made it impossible for him to even see, much less accept, another culture's premises.

That alone would have been reprehensible, but Kristof had the unmitigated gall to want another culture to yield to the decadence of his own; and that psychotic narcissism represents little more than an attempt to justify his own debased culture.

He had no rational excuse for his myopic vision. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and asked women there why they covered themselves with black abayas. They clearly told him they didn't want to publicly expose themselves to men.

Kristof reported that "In Riyadh, several Saudi women offered the same scathing critique, effectively arguing that Saudi women are the free ones - free from sexual harassment, free from pornography, free from seeing their bodies used to market cars and colas. It is Western women, they say, who have been manipulated into becoming the toys of men."

These women didn't suggest to Kristof that his own women change their ways, become less decadent and cover up.  Arab women don't have a gauche drive to impose their own culture on others. That kind of thinking comes from haughtiness, the grandiose superiority complex of a culture hooked on its own importance, on viagra, hookers, pornography, wife swapping, sex shops, titillating busts and worse.

If challenging another culture wasn't enough effrontery, Kristof had the "chutzpah" (a fitting description for those who automatically denigrate anything Arab) to conclude his article with a snide comment about Saudi Arabians choosing to "sacrifice international respect by clinging to the 15th century, if the women prefer to remain second-class citizens, then I suppose that's their choice. But if anyone chooses to behave so foolishly, is it any surprise that outsiders point and jeer"?

The only ones pointing and jeering are those trying to veil their own sick, insolent biases by denigrating others who choose to be different.

Kristof's whole charade sounded a bit like Bush's penchant for "regime change" for Iraq. It's narrowly focused and anti-Arab. If Kristof wanted all women, and not just Arabs, to dress Western, he would have chastised Indian women for their saris, nuns for their habits and the Japanese for their kimonos. Instead, he reveals his true colours by maligning only Arab women for not yielding to his bikini code of undress.

Whenever Western journalists debase another culture, it's consistently Arabs, Arabs, Arabs. It's time these journalists were recognized and exposed as cultural bigots.