This Joe Klein post where he points out that there is a lack of ethnic balance in Obama's rumored Middle East advisors is getting some play:
I suppose that it falls to Jewish males like Cohen (and me) to point out this discrepancy since anyone else making the observation would immediately be accused of anti-semitism by the usual suspects. But Cohen has listed some powerhouse Muslims, who would be a terrific addition to Obama's team--Shibley Telhami, Fawaz Gerges and Vali Nasr, among others. I'd also suggest that Pete Mansoor, a Palestinian-American who recently retired from the U.S. Army--he served on David Petraeus's Baghdad team--would be an excellent staffer.
I know that Fawaz Gerges is from an Christian background (the surname is a quick clue if you didn't know ahead of time). Shibley Telhami's name suggested to me that he was likely to be a non-Muslim, and it turns out that he too is an Arab Christian. If you're a good Bayesian you'll of course assume that there's a higher probability that any Arab intellectual or thinker a non-Muslim would know is more likely to be from a Christian background (because Christian Arabs assimilate into Western culture to a higher degree than Muslim Arabs). This kind of stuff is stupid, though I've seen plenty of people do it in the past. Makes "pundits" look like retards frankly, though I don't see any of Joe Klein's 20 commenters pointing out the problem with his assertion, so they're probably just ignorant. Some people might wonder if I'm being pedantic. Well, some people are imprecise retards. Confusing Arab Christians and Muslims is just retarded. The insanity has to stop somewhere. Use google. Know something about the world before you open your mouth!
(yes, I'm telling you what I think)
P.S. You're also dumb if you think Persians are Arabs. Some of Klein's moronic commenters are complaining that you'd need Persians in Obama's circle, but one of the individuals Klein identified as a Muslim (correctly), Vali Nasr, is Persian. Like Joe they're getting the categories of Muslim and Arab confused, and since Vali was identified as Muslim they assumed he was Arab (while the other two are Arabs, but not Muslim). Retards.
Note: I said Christian background because many Arabs from Christian backgrounds might not be religious at all. Edward Said for example was an atheist from a Christian background who identified as an Arab whose civilization was Islam (how's that for a mouthful?). My own suspicion is that Vali Nasr is not an orthodox Muslim at all, as his father has connections with perennialist movement.
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I notice that Klein initially refers to 'Arabs or Persians on Barack Obama's Middle East negotiating team', suggesting that he is fully conscious of the distinction between the two. Given this, I thinkhis later reference to an 'all arab team' shows laziness rather than an actual lack of awareness that Persians are not Arabs.
Additionally, the fact that his focus is on the ethnic dimension (as you observe) and not on religious diversity suggests that when he suddenly referred to 'Muslims' he was thinking in terms of (Arab+Persian) ethnicity rather than religious background.
Your ire is justified (and you're certainly not 'just being pedantic'), but it seems the offences are ignorance* and (still more) carelessness rather than (necessarily) stupidity... not that either are any more excusable.
Oh, and when it comes to the '20 commenters [who fail to point out] the problem with his assertion', you need to take into account that roughly half of those comments were preoccupied with discussing the burning issue of Obama's 'Muslim middle name'. With that as the intellectual bar for the discussion, expecting anyone to raide the points you did is a little unrealistic.
*Yes, I know; use google. But you need to know that you need to know to use google... And if I'm right in my supposition that Klein did not in fact mean 'muslim', he didn't need to check that data: he just needed to say 'Arabs and Persians' or something.
Maybe I'm an idiot for expecting better from Time magazine and Joe Klein. Sure, it's just a blog and blogs don't use those fancy 'fact checkers' or 'teh google'. But frankly he had to look up how to spell their names I'm sure how much harder would it have been to also check if what he was saying about them was even in the same universe as accurate?
Also: "Some people might wonder if I'm being pedantic. Well, some people are imprecise retards. " is truly beautiful and I will be using it in the future. Often.
outeast,
1) your general sketch as to the origins of the conflation are surely right.
2) that is part of the problem; conflating arab christians with arab muslims is retarded and is a heuristic which causes problems because arab christians and arab muslims often have different interests and behaviors. though christians are only a small % of arabs (5-10% in the levant and egypt), they are an overwhelming majority of the arab diaspora.
3) klein doesn't know much about the middle east. fawaz gerges is known to be lebanese, and the name is a pretty good clue from what little i know that he is a christian by background. the fact that this doesn't trigger a rollback that clarifies his conflation suggests he knows a lot less than i do about the middle east.
4) i don't know enough to really talk about the middle east. by the rule of transitivity joe klein doesn't know enough to talk about the middle east.
5) pundits should be mitigating, not reinforcing the general retardation of the public.
Joe Klein is in fact a pompous ignoramus who is too lazy and too arrogant to bother to learn who these people are. Almost all his readers are like him.
Gerges = Georgios?
Quite a few Arab Christians in the US (since the turn of the last century at least), but probably not as many as in Latin America. (The Arab diaspora in Latin America include the richest man in Mexico, the current president of El Salvador, several former leaders of Ecuador, and Latino celebrities like John Leguizamo, Salma Hayek and Shakira.)
There are very few Arab Christians in Europe (including France, where the "beurs" are almost all North African Muslims.)
Gerges = Georgios?
yeah, i think so. he's from a melkite/orthodox background, not maronite.
Quite a few Arab Christians in the US (since the turn of the last century at least), but probably not as many as in Latin America.
the greatest number of lebanese descended people do not live in lebanon. they live in brazil. look it up :-) of course, their assimilation isn't too surprising, they're catholics (even if originally a different rite) and don't look that different form iberian whites.
"Makes "pundits" look like retards frankly,"
Wait, do you mean there are pundits who are not retards? I thought it was part of the qualifications for the job.
Makes "pundits" look like retards frankly:
For more on this, check out this clip from the Daily Show on Pundit Retards - hilarious!