‘Jihad is no longer quite as cool an idea as it was…’
: There’s a great line from Salman Rushdie sparking column in the New York Times today. He worries about the anti-Americanism we face now — because we are to be envied and because we are to be envied more now that we have succeeded so quickly in Afghanistan. Even if there is peace in Palestine, Rushie says anti-American would continue because it:
…has become too useful a smokescreen for Muslim nations’ many defects ó their corruption, their incompetence, their oppression of their citizens, their economic, scientific and cultural stagnation. America-hating has become a badge of identity, making possible a chest- beating, flag-burning rhetoric of word and deed that makes men feel good. It contains a strong streak of hypocrisy, hating most what it desires most, and elements of self- loathing. (“We hate America because it has made of itself what we cannot make of ourselves.”) What America is accused of ó closed- mindedness, stereotyping, ignorance ó is also what its accusers would see if they looked into a mirror.
F the Olympics
: The Guardian reports that U.S. Olympic organizers have been instructed not to have either any overt shows of patriotism or tributes to the victims of 9.11 in the opening ceremonies.
That’s it. I’ve had it with the Olympics and believe we should not bother hosting them again.
They are an utterly discredited event. They are no longer about amateur sports. They are rife with corruption and payoffs and politics and drugs.
In Utah, the American taxpayer ended up footing the bill for development in Salt Lake City that will do no one but them any good. And I do not believe that the net result of hosting the Olympics is profit.
And now this affront.
