Culture Wars

First off, let me apologize for the girly picture.  Bear with me, there is a point to this (beyond my own infamously prurient nature, of course).  This is a picture of an ad featured in a magazine I found while killing time at a Mugg & Bean coffeeshop in the Mushrif Mall in Abu Dhabi.  Granted, it is amusing/offensive on several levels, not the least of which is the always successful appeal to male fears of waning virility.  However, what I find most interesting are the black lines which attempt, clumsily, to cover up the more "offensive" parts of the woman.  As you might guess, those are lines from a black marker which some Emirati official used in an ineffectual attempt at censorship.  My grandfather Herbert, the Hoosier philosopher, to allay my fears, would tell me that when I saw a snake I should remember that the snake is actually far more afraid of me than I am of it.  The same can also be said for our relationship with the Islamic world.  Despite our well-documented fear of this part of the world, mainly whipped up by the increasingly hysterical right wing, the truth is that Muslims are far more afraid of the U.S., and not because of our military might.  Rather, they are afraid, rightly so, of the cultural might of America and the concomitant worldview.  The point is not whether or not that worldview is better or worse than the prevailing worldview (as with most things it is a little bit of both), but that it inspires some very tangible fear, which might manifest itself as anti-U.S. riots in the street or something as seemingly harmless as black marks in magazines.  The reality is that very few Americans actually have any contact, even tangentially, with any aspect of the Islamic world, whereas America touches the lives of every Muslim.

If you are reduced to using a black marker to color out the naughty bits of women in magazines you are taking a serious pounding in the culture wars.