I sadly haven't, actually. I started following her because I was reading the articles she's written for The Nation. Maybe coincidentally (though not exactly surprisingly), I'm pretty sure the first I read was The Missionary Position.

I was more thinking Ottoman presence and British involvement in the Arab Revolt and eventual support for Ibn Saud. But the way I said it didn't make sense, especially in this context. "Colonial history" certainly wasn't the right phrase to use. What I wanted to say was that its development didn't happen in a vacuum, but its lack thereof is really different from other contexts.

You can correct me. Looking back at it with my head a little less "!!!!" I'd already say I probably shouldn't have used a term like "Wahhabist," and it was a super generalized statement for a rant about... not doing that. If you want to share the nitpick, I'd like to hear it :)

So it’s kind of ridiculous that I’m coming out of my awful-at-being-around-ness for this episode, which I hate so much, but. I feel like I need to address why I, at least, have serious issues with the creation of “Qumar” in this context.

The foremost reason is that Arab- and Muslim-majority countries (which, by the way, are very different terms meaning very different things – countries like Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Turkey are Muslim-majority but not Arab-majority; India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world and is not Muslim-majority; only about 15% of Muslims are Arab) are frequently depicted as a monolith in U.S. media and culture. There is no understanding of the distinct cultural contexts from one country or nation or ethnic identity to another. We’re talking about places with diverse social, religious, and cultural histories.

So here’s a generalized statement: all Muslim-majority countries (and nations) have issues regarding women’s rights. So do all countries generally, but we’ll just talk about Muslim-majority ones for right now. How those issues exist and play out varies tremendously country to country, based on their own particular cultural context. Let’s take one country’s example: In Iran, women are required to cover their hair. At points during the Shah’s reign, women were actually forbidden from wearing a covering such as a hijab. (And it was Muslim-majority then, too.) This isn’t like some linear race where some places just have “come as far” as others – what is happening now in any given country is a reaction to specific history. Iran’s particular context includes the fact that its ruler for decades was a brutal dictator who was maintained by Western powers. (This includes the CIA driving a coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh, the secular, democratically-elected prime minister who managed to temporarily unseat the Shah from power. Guess what? If you drive out the moderates, only the extremists will remain.)

And this goes on and on. I could talk about the particular case of Saudi Arabia, where its colonial history helped shape the Wahhabist religious movement that ultimately holds power there today. Or Afghanistan but I won’t because I can’t even with all the complex issues that go into that.

But my point is, it’s not denying women’s rights abuses to firmly contextualize them. It’s acknowledging them for what they are and discussing them in a straightforward manner. You’re not really discussing these issues if you don’t acknowledge them for what they are, how they came to be, and, in a way that gives agency to the people who are actually dealing with them, how they can be addressed.

And this is my problem with Qumar. It doesn’t do any of that. Sorkin picks a bunch of vague Muslims Are Mean To Women stereotypes and then just stuffs them into this made up country. It’s a straw man. I can’t discuss it in any real way because I can’t talk about the particular context because Sorkin made it up. It feels disturbingly like Sorkin just used his impressions of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban, which is all the more disturbing because those are very disparate entities shoved under an Arabic-sounding name. Which, again, is happening at a time when Muslim and Arab identities are being widely portrayed as a simple monolith, and when that kind of sentiment frankly fuels human rights abuses against Arabs and Muslims. (Including and in particular Muslim and Arab men, which makes this all the more uncomfortable.) What this does is takes an issue, entirely decontextualizes it, and gives it a name, and face, that the audience will simply view as “Arab” or “Muslim” or “Middle Eastern.” And really, only a white woman is allowed to talk about it (because god forbid a Muslima in a headscarf show up in a discussion of the abuses perpetrated against her, and of course the country’s made up so I don’t even know what that would look like!!!!).

Like, I get that part of the point the show was trying to make was that the U.S. has done some fucked up foreign policy things, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t totally engage in this stereotype and used the fake-country thing to create a tailored and generalized portrayal of women’s rights issues involving people who never fucking show up. I mean, I agree with what you’ve said about Amy and sex workers, but how is the same not true for C.J. and “the women of Qumar”? Not to mention how, as discussed, it fuels the hugely damaging idea that an unbelievably diverse region, religion, and ethnicity can be portrayed through a singular, fictionalized lens?

... and maybe some day I will do something other than rant.

So I feel a little bad that I'm using this episode to talk about my problems with the show, as it's not that I dislike this episode in particular, but... I have energy right now and am not at work. So.

- So let's see if I can finally have the energy to do this: the last episode and this really exemplify my issue with Sorkin and women. They don't learn things, they're taught things by men. Of the White House staffers, the only ones who aren't secretaries are C.J. and Mandy, and Mandy seems to exist to be this show's punching bag. For often no real reason – I'm sorry, if she worked for a politician who they knew was planning to challenge Bartlet … what did they think she did? I will say, I don't know much about being a media consultant, and if she were say, an attorney I'd have a bigger problem with what she did, because it'd border on confidentiality and conflict of interest issues. But if these are issues, no one here brings them up. Instead it's just omg Mandy wrote a mean thing about us when she was working for the guy who was going to challenge Bartlet which is something we knew when we hired her. (Also, we knew what position papers were last time? We understand that work product is not the same as a personal opinion? Or I guess that's only when Sam writes things, okay.) And if it's not this, it's her existing to be some conduit for Josh to mess with Toby. Or her being taught an important lesson about … speaking up in the Oval Office, apparently. Or lol she and Josh dated. Which when it comes down to it seems to have been the entire basis of her character. Someone to annoy Josh, but the dude always ends up with the upper hand.

Honestly, it comes off like more than anything, she's being vilified for not being a yeswoman to all these Super Brilliant Dudes.

And then there's Mallory, which… I really didn't think what happened with her in the last episode was cute or funny. Not just explaining what a position paper was to me was just treating her like a child. For me, it's frustrating and uncomfortable to watch her get all worked up just because Sam apparently wants to humor her and Leo wants to annoy her for… dating at all, I guess. It felt like the theatrical equivalent of bopping her nose and saying 'you're so cute when you're angry!' Between this and Leo and Bartlet lecturing her about respecting her father's job – well, god forbid anyone on this show treat her like an actual adult.

And while being a secretary is important work, and this isn't about looking down on them, only Donna and Mrs. Landingham seem to get much personality beyond being badgered by their bosses. And frankly, while watching one scene of the dudes having a meeting while the Mrs. Landingham admonished the secretaries talking outside, I felt like I was watching Mad Men. And this is Sorkin's idealized administration. Okay.

I do love C.J. And while I have some issues with how she's treated, too… my energy has run out. Ohg jnvg hagvy "Gur Jbzra bs Dhzne."

- So because one of Josh's candidates is from the Heritage Foundation, I'm going to tell the one gossipy story I got out of being an intern in DC for a summer. Which is that one of my co-workers roommates was sleeping with her boss, and she worked for the Heritage Foundation.

- I do appreciate that at least I can think "hey we repealed that!" for Don't Ask Don't Tell. Unfortunately the Boy Scouts thing and sexual assault in the military is very timely.

- Ah, the days when the senate actually cared what the majority of Americans thought.

- Also, I'd point out that being attracted to someone and sexually harassing or assaulting them are not the same thing. Or let me put it this way, for some straight dudes: just because you feel the need to make your attraction known the moment it occurs to you doesn't mean we all do. It's not actually some debilitating experience just because you'd like to pretend it is to excuse your behavior.

... and now I really need to eat food things. Okay.

- Maybe it's because I've actually seen some Beijing opera, but I got really tired of it being this thing everyone was randomly talking shit about for the whole episode. I get that it, or European opera, or whatever isn't everyone's thing, but then... don't go? It's not something being forced on you? I don't understand?! I don't know, I really like the music, so I just got kind of tired of the ugh, why do I have to sit through that attitude that seemed to pervade the discussion of it.

- This doesn't really bother me, but I believe a national park can only be created by an act of Congress, whereas a national monument can be designated through an executive order.

- I agree that Leo was lashing out at his daughter, but what I don't like is that I feel like this episode was essentially saying he and the President were right in their actions. That Mallory needed to learn a lesson and that the Leo and the President's unbelievably passive-aggressive bullshit was the way to communicate that, rather than, I don't know, having Leo just ask Mallory if she was blaming him for her parents' break up. (And to be fair here, I don't think it's entirely true that Leo did nothing to her. Fortunately, at this point she appears to be a reasonably well-adjusted and independent adult, but having your parents split up isn't exactly a picnic at any point, and can put a lot of pressure on their children, whether their parents mean for that to happen or not. That Leo doesn't acknowledge at all that these actions have an effect on Mallory bothers me. And this isn't even to say I think Leo's a Bad Person for putting his career before his marriage, but actions do have consequences. And frankly, I do wonder how this storyline would have played if Leo were a woman.)

- V qba'g ernyyl zvaq Qnaal naq PW, ohg V guvax gung'f va cneg orpnhfr jr frr yngre ba gung gurl pna wbfgyr rnpu bgure ba n zhghny yriry, naq gung Qnaal unq orra jvgu gurz fvapr gur pnzcnvta, juvpu znxrf guvf vagrenpgvba frrz yvxr cneg bs n cerrkvfgvat pbafgehpg orgjrra gur gjb, engure guna guvf arj thl ohttvat PW nyyyyy gur gvzr.

- Though I can empathize with Toby and Sam when it comes to having to write things, as whenever I have to it does involve a lot of staring at a computer and willing Words In An Order That Sounds Nice to appear.

Okay but remember that you asked!!!

Briefly, since it became independent from French control in the 1940s, Syria has had a secular, republican-presidential government. And when I say that, I'm not denying that it's a dictatorship, I'm just describing its form. But the point is really that it tended to lean more toward Arab/Syrian nationalism with some degree of socialism, and not toward the sort of politicized religious movements like those that took power in Saudi Arabia and eventually Iran. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria staged an uprising in the 1970s, which eventually ended in the Hama massacre where Syrian security forces killed probably at least in the tens of thousands of people, most of whom were civilians, and managed to essentially destroy the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. This occurred when Hafez al-Assad, the father of current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, was in office. Hafez al-Assad would have still been in office during the time when this episode aired.

So, Syria's tense relations with the U.S. have largely stemmed from its military conflicts with Israel, its ties to the Soviet Union, and that time in 1957 when the CIA tried to instigate a coup against its president. Syria actually cooperated in the First Gulf War, but then opposed the Iraq War, has tried to occupy Lebanon, and has lent "passive support" (i.e., doesn't actively try to arrest/otherwise seize them, and the U.S. accuses Syria of allowing arms to pass through the country to them) to certain regional terrorist groups, most of these based around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (e.g., Hamas) or Lebanon (Hezbollah, which is also, like the Syrian government, Shi'a despite that most of the region is Sunni). So it's one of the dictatorships with horrible human rights records that the U.S. doesn't like.

But our not liking it doesn't reach the level of its defense minister instructing a fundamentalist organization to shoot down a military plane. Syria tends to be hostile toward pan-Islamic or generally religious fundamentalist organizations that it doesn't otherwise see as "resistance movements," like the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. The terrorist organizations it does support, while religiously conservative, tend to be more politically focused and don't have this same pan-Islamist view. But even then, the idea that the "command structure" so to speak would work in such a way that the Syrian defense minister would give the order just doesn't work – while I think it's fair to link actions of terrorist groups that receive forms of "passive support" back to the Syrian government, there's nothing to suggest that any terrorist group essentially acts as paramilitary wings of the government. Part of the reason the "war on terror" has been such a complex mess is that there is no individual country we can blame a lot of the time.

And this is important, because it buys into the notion that various organizations and people and even entire ethnic blocs in the Middle East and South Asia can be essentially conflated with one another. Which is untrue and dangerous, for reasons such as "Saddam Hussein is horrible but did not cause the September 11 attacks."

Bs pbhefr, jr'er abg rira gb gung lrg. Bu ubj sha Jne ba Greebe Jrfg Jvat jvyy or.

Then I have zero knowledge of Rahm Emmanuel's fan following was like during the Clinton years.

Spoilers for... future episodes, I'm sorry, I don't remember which: Ohg gur bayl bgure znavsrfgngvba bs guvf V ernyyl erzrzore va guvf fubj jnf zber onfrq bss GI fubj sna sbehzf.

Edit: It occurs to me that George Stephanopoulos could also be a candidate for this. I guess? Maybe the fact that I'm not into dudes has made me super unaware of the extent of this kind of thing. Because it meant I'd wouldn't be paying much attention to those kinds of conversations if they were happening around me. Someday I will stop editing!

Mine was to Richard Lugar about repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. Yeah...

He was also the actual Chief of Staff, though I guess he would be closer to Josh's ... fan appreciation range than I guess maybe Leo is supposed to be.