In this article, Uber-RAPE Mohsin Hamid sees how much lipstick he can possible apply to a beast of the porcine variety. Lots of SWPL here (Stuff White People Like), and plus it's in the New Yorker!
LETTER FROM LAHORE: “DON’T ANGRY ME”
Passing through the Qatar airport, I thought I glimpsed, on the horizontally scrolling news ticker of a red-liveried news channel that was probably BBC, the information that an American Ambassador had been killed. My first thought was, Where? My second, related, was, I hope not in Pakistan.
After reconfirming that my four-month-old son was securely strapped to my chest {PAKI=MODRAN MAN WHO DOES EQUAL CHILD REARING CHECK}, I fished out my BlackBerry. Like many online Pakistanis, I have a group of friends I turn to for breaking news, political commentary, and gallows humor{PAKI JUST LIKE WESTREN HIPSTERS CHECK} . My circle, mostly aged forty or thereabouts, favors the decidedly uncool (to which a chart of R.I.M.’s plummeting share price will, sadly, attest) medium of BlackBerry Messenger—B.B.M.—for this purpose {ALSO IRONIC AND SELF-DEPRECATING IN A JON STEWART KIND OF WAY CHECK}.
Libya. Surprising. I powered off my phone for the flight to Lahore. When I powered it up again, waiting my turn at the X-ray scanners with which customs officers prevent alcohol from being smuggled into Pakistan {PAKI TRAVEL BY PLANES JUST LIKE US CHECK. AND FOLLOW THE RULES CHECK} (the war on booze being approximately as successful in our country as the war on drugs is in the U.S.{PAKI ALSO USE WORDS LIKE APPROXIMATELY LIKE HIP WESTERN WRITERS. PLUS NICE EQUAL EQUAL BETWEEN US WAR AND PAKI WAR. CHECK}), there were already several B.B.M. messages suggesting that the Ambassador’s killing was related to the film “Innocence of Muslims.”
The following day, on B.B.M., Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, I came across numerous claims that we would soon see anti-film protests raging across Pakistan; questions about what was wrong with, variously, the Americans, the Libyans, we Pakistanis, Muslims, and the people who run YouTube; and jokes too offensive to too many varied sensibilities to consider reproducing here, although some were, in my admittedly idiosyncratic estimation, really quite good. {PAKIS, AMRICANS ALL SAME, PAKIS ALL WELL CONNECTED INTERNET SAVVY CHECK}
I also received more than the usual quantity of chain-S.M.S. messages that day, and—in addition to the standard advertisements for English-language training courses, Dengue-thwarting mosquito nets, energy-efficient air conditioners, and pay-by-text Koranic guidance—there were two that caught my eye. {PAKISTAN MODRAN COUNTRY OF ENGLISH SPEAKING ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS PEOPLE CHECK EVEN IF THERE IS A SLIGHT PROBLEM WITH DENGUE BUT THAT IS BEING SOLVED WITH TECHNOLOGY ANYWAY CHECK}
I have three broadband providers for my home, a bit obsessive, admittedly, but even in regular times the reliability of each leaves something to be desired. {ALL MODRAN TAKNALAGIES ARE AVAILABLE IN PAKISTAN CHECK}
The hurricane approached. People began their preparations. We did our grocery shopping on Thursday evening (the streets were packed; the traffic was terrible). My driver, a Christian, asked if he could stay home from work (the answer was yes){MODERATE ENLIGHTENMENT CHECK}. The birthday party of one of my daughter’s classmates was cancelled.
The hurricane hit. On my TV set, Pakistan was aflame. E-mails from friends abroad asked after my well being. I went out for a drive in the afternoon and things in my neighborhood were utterly calm—disconcertingly so, for mine is normally a bustling area to which the word “calm” does not usually apply. This reinforced the idea that Pakistan is a big country. A hundred and eighty million people is a lot of people. Pitched battles between protesters and police can be going on in one place, barriers made of shipping containers can be breached by mobs in another, and cinemas can be burned to the ground in a third—all of which did occur that day—and yet, in most locales, with the naked eye, you will see none of this. {ONLY .000000001% PROTESTED CHECK}
Phone service was restored that night. {AGAIN MODRAN EFFICIENT COUNTRY CHECK} Blogging, text messaging, Op-Ed-page comment posting, etc. resumed in earnest on Saturday.{NICE LITERATE MODERATELY ENLIGHTENED PABLUS CHECK} By most accounts, approximately twenty people had been killed across the country: rioters, police, a TV cameraman, bystanders. Among my Lahori friends there was an air of sadness, depression. Others were more proactive, like the five thousand students who signed up to coördinate cleanup efforts in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi through their dedicated Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag #ProjectCleanUpForPeace. {PEACEFUL LIBERAL EFFICIENT ACTIVISM CHECK}
BTW, there was a video of that cleanup posted on vimeo. It was a few dozen people sweeping up one intersection, all done solely for the video. The marketing spin never stops with these guys.
One friend sent, via B.B.M., a picture he had just taken of a rickshaw with these words written, in English, on the back of its fabric cabin: “Don’t Angry Me.” {OH THOSE WACKY ENGLISH-LITERATE PAKISTANI AUTORICKSHAW DRIVERS AND THEIR GALLOWS HUMOR!}
I was reminded of the Gadsden flags I had seen flying, years ago, on a trip to South Carolina: yellow, rattlesnake, “Don’t Tread on Me.” {WELL-TRAVELLED PAKI CHECK} Who knows, maybe the rickshaw driver had come back home from the United States after 9/11. Or maybe he’d stumbled upon that slogan, or something similar, on Google. Or maybe he’d even caught a clip, on a slow-buffering visit to YouTube, fluttering in the crisp breeze of freedom.
{YES, THAT'S WHAT IT WAS. PAKISTANI AUTORICKSHAW DRIVERS ARE APPROXIMATELY AS LITERATE AS PAKISTANI AUTHORS OF ENGLISH CHECK}
But then some sdre posted this:
Code: Select all
"Don't angry me "is Dialogue from a Hindi movie called [b]"Rowdy Rathore"[/b],I think that's what protesters were acting out being Rowdy Rathores that day. link---->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=licWGt1sewA
The nerve of this SDRE, attributing to Rowdy Rathore a saying, instead of Gadsden flags of South Carolina.
says it has suffered big financial losses after a ban was imposed on running of ‘Indian’ films here.
