Dubai Drama
In late July, Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim
was stabbed multiple times and her throat slashed in her well-appointed Dubai apartment. In a pulpy twist, an Egyptian billionaire and parliamentarian,
Hisham Talaat Mustafa, has been charged with paying a hit man $2 million to kill Tamim, Mustafa's former lover. According to the English-language Egyptian weekly
Al-Ahram, the indictment of Mustafa came as a surprise to many Egyptians, as
businessmen like Mustafa are the "backbone of the [ruling] National Democratic Party." Of course, the ruling party is spinning the arrest as a clear sign that it is not biased towards businessmen. Alieddin Hilal, NDP secretary for media affairs, tells
Al-Ahram, "the ruling party knows no cronyism and nobody in Egypt is above the law".
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crappy hour
GODDAMMIT GERALDINE, you just
had to drag me back down into your withering wackjob abyss. I
said I was never going to post about the Clinton campaign and sexism, since more than
12 out of 12 Clinton campaign surrogates agree that's
not why she lost to Obama (despite that, congrats on winning Kentucky yesterday!), and then you go on Fox News and tell Shep Smith that Bob Herbert is a "black journalist who is a surrogate for Obama" on the basis that he is an unremitting misogynist who "hasn't had anything nice to say about Hillary in the last six months." Well, Geraldine, your charge that the media ignores sexism brought me back to a column I read about five months ago. "If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media," it opined, "it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America." Well, if it wasn't written by
BOB HERBERT himself! Not that you'd bother
reading the writings of such a blatant token with a political leanings so simpleminded he would support a candidate solely on the basis of a shared RACE. Anyway, that and oil prices, Hezbollah, a new World Bank report and how come there are no black people in Kentucky with
Megan and (a somewhat irate) me after the jump.
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news roundup
- New York City police arrested Al Sharpton, Sean Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and hundreds of other protesters today for staging prayer sessions at the exits of Manhattan in protest over the acquittal of the cops that shot Mr. Bell. Because, obviously, inconveniencing others to protest the loss of life means you should spend time at Rikers. Why did they have to make me like Al Sharpton? [NY Times]
- Hillary's staying in the race despite the hellishly long odds, hoping that Barack will fuck it up and she can convince the superdelegates to anoint her the candidate. [NY Times]
- To that end, she had an unannounced meeting in Washington with many of them behind closed doors. There's nothing sketchy-looking about that to the average voter though. [The Atlantic]
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critical mass
Caramel is a new rom-com from Lebanon with all the typical traits of a Queen Latifah comedy set abroad (and with no Queen Latifah). Nadine Labaki (who also wrote and directed the film) stars as Layale, a Christian woman and owner of a beauty salon in Beirut who presides over a colorful cast of characters who gather weekly to gossip about their lives. Although the film has some provocative themes, even for American audiences (a hairwasher's lesbian crush on a client; a woman who considers vaginal reconstructive surgery) most movie critics have found the film a little too conventional, though pleasant. We say, with all of crap out recycled in Hollywood chick-flick after Hollywood chick-flick, it's nice to see a formulaic but foreign film centered around female friendships. Some sweet and bitter reviews after the jump.
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Jezebel
Maid In Lebanon
According to a Human Rights Watch report released yesterday, foreign maids in Lebanon have been dying at a rate of more than one a week. Since January 2007, at least 95 foreign maids have died from either suicide, falling from high buildings while trying to escape their employers, or health issues (we're guessing that they don't have healthcare). Interviews with the embassies and friends of those who committed suicide reveal that they were unhappy due to forced confinement and excessive work demands; according to another report, nearly 1/3 of foreign maids in the country are not allowed to leave the homes in which they work. [HRW via NYT]
crappy hour
