Meaningless op-eds masquerading as human interest stories
From the CNN.com article: Muslim women: My headscarf is not a threat after telling a story about rudeness at Walmart while wearing a hijab (which they put in quotation marks for some reason).
Such stories are not altogether uncommon for Muslim Americans.
Wow, not altogether uncommon! I guess it’s not unlike a problem of variable merit. There’s also the annoying use of the term Muslim American (implying ethnicity or nationality) instead of American Muslim.
The rest of the story is of dubious logic and follows the same pattern as all other CNN.com stories about group identity, which is
- An offensive incident
- A quote of data after some seemingly arbitrary date
- Quote from expert
- Further interview with subject, telling everyone that he/she wants to be different while remaining the same.
3 Comments
subadei
“telling everyone that he/she wants to be different while remaining the same.”
Lol! Perfectly said.
Interesting that we focus first on religion/ethnicity and second on nationality. Hence; African American, Muslim American, Asian American.
Like you, I think the terms would be better served were they reversed. I believe people give little concern to the power that language bears culturally and socially. How it defines not only our means of communication but also, to some degree, our process of thought and our ultimate means of definition.
Steve
As Robert Anton Wilson suggested, We should all communicate exclusively in E-Prime.
Anonymous
It’s never easy with these people. Not “Muslims” specifically, but the entire group of confusing, somewhat contradictory people. It’s not considered Cricket to take them to task for the entire group’s sins, or what-have-you. Plus, it’s been a fairly slow news cycle lately.
You both would have loved to have seen the shouting match between two people over how a certain “Bird” was being treated by the big bad media. It was rich. You didn’t know whether to cry or throw pies.
-Anon-a-monster