Daily Double

Mrs. Weasel will look on me with regretful scorn having heard iterations of all of this before, but an email I got tonight from MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) was a real two-fer Tuesday, featuring two of my pet subjects: Arab culture and Oprah bashing:

Oprah Angers Saudi Women With Cliched, Over-Simplistic, and Stereotypical Portrayal of Their Lives
"The American talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey recently did a show on "Women Across the Globe," in which she hosted 11 women, each representing a different country and culture. Representing Saudi Arabia was television hostess Rania Al-Baz, who made headlines in August 2004 when she was beaten nearly to death by her husband.

The fact that Al-Baz was chosen as representative of Saudi women provoked criticism in the Saudi press, particularly among women columnists. These columnists claimed that the show had shown bias by portraying Saudi society as oppressing women; they also argued that Rania Al-Baz's appearance on the show damaged the reputation of all Saudi women. They argued that violence against women is not a phenomenon unique to Saudi Arabia, but is rather a global problem and, furthermore, that the situation of Saudi women is better than that of women in the U.S....."

One of the top ten greatest Americans, my hairy arse. Where's her bloody advocacy magnet?