The Kingdom of Silence

one word: Blech.


Greg Palast the Con p 263 of Armed Madhouse

In his vulturous, brain-damaged way, Zell Miller was right: Stand up for Black voters and the redneck boobs will take their revenge. So the election came down to this: Nitwits who think Ollie North's a hero not a conman, who can't name their congressman, who believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin laden were going steady, who can't tell Afghanistan from a souvlaki stand and bloated with lies and super-sized fries, clomped to the polls 59 million strong to vent their small-minded hatreds on us all.

I fear the election was an intelligence test that America flunked.

(So far this is my favorite paragraph in the book .)


THE KINGDOM OF SILENCE
A job at a Saudi newspaper offers a rare look inside a closed society.
by LAWRENCE WRIGHT
Issue of 2004-01-05Posted 2004-01-05

This New Yorker article is very long. Parts of it are very funny, and I'm sure that this passage is meant to be somewhat sympathetic:
"For most of the country’s business and intellectual leaders, and for many of the royals, the Western world had been a refuge from the intellectual and sensual sterility of the kingdom. I suspected that many had nurtured a secret escape plan in case the extremists gained complete control—they would retreat to second homes in Santa Barbara or Miami. But now such places seemed hostile to them. These élite men who had prided themselves on living in two worlds felt trapped in their own stern culture, and they were suffocating."


My first thought after reading it was Good, maybe the chickenshit Saudis will do something about their out of control religious idiots.