Cultural Icons: Britney and bin Laden
.…They're both popular celebrities in some pockets of the world. I stopped short at the following anecdote, which I found in a recent book by Mark LeVine, a University of California professor, Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil
As one Saudi doctor explains, "My daughter is for bin Laden. When I go to wake her up, I see pictures of Palestinian girl martyrs on her wall. It scares me to death. If we go into her room at night, she'll be listening to Britney Spears, but as soon as we close the door she's listening to martyr songs."
LeVine brings up the anecdote to point out an ongoing failure by the American government (and American corporations) to understand that loving American soap operas and sneakers doesn't necessarily produce love of American policy.
The United States has gone out of its way to pay big lip service (and a few dollars) to making sure that women in the Middle East are liberated. It's a cornerstone of the idea that American style democracy can be placed wholesale on foreign ground and it will thrive the way we want it to. What irony: here is the daughter of a Saudi professional who dreams of personal liberation and professional satisfaction. She keeps role models of women she admires on her wall. But they're suicide bombers.
Read a review of Why They Don't Hate Us | Suicide Terrorism: Definitions, Groups, Theories
Comments
No one can expect to understand the tormented evocations of a single young woman in that environment and make the world a hallowed pronouncement based on it. Young girls like to strut their stuff. When wearing bombs are in fashion, bombs it will be. Britney fits right in here, as another in a long line of self-destructive celebrity burn-outs. The impulse to go out with a bang is nothing new; neither are the methods of exploiting it. Perhaps they need their own “Dear Abby” over there for some hard-nosed kitchen table advice on these matters. Oh, that’s right, oppressive taboos and press restrictions, and all that. Forgot. No wait, she could write to Nancy Pelosi. Good Ole Nancy’s getting tight with the terror bunch, maybe they could share recipes!