Wednesday, July 07, 2010  l'affaire Octavia Nasr  The dismissal
of Octavia Nasr proves this: 1) no matter how much you grovel
and how much you insult Arabs and Muslims in the US, as Nasr has
largely due to her ignorance of Middle East and Islamic affairs,
it will never be enough. Unless you advocate the Likudnik
positions as Fouad Ajami has, you will be suspect of you are of
Arab origin; 2) Israeli orientalists rule supreme in US popular
media. We may know that Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah has no
position whatsoever in Hizbullah, but US media still insist that
he is Hizbullah's leader. 3) Octavia Nasr does not deserve our
support or tears. She has played a lousy job inside CNN. Of
course, she is first and foremost unqualified but she has
started her "journalistic" work at LBC TV when it was a mere
tool of the Lebanese Forces during the war years. I discussed
this once with CNN's Bernard Shaw and he expressed surprise and
said that at CNN they thought that LBC TV stands for a state-run
TV named Lebanese Broadcast