King Abdullah and Obama? No it’s Maureen and yo Mama!
Don’t you just love it? King Abdullah and Obama… no, it is Maureen talking bout your mama.
What I loved is how bad the pictures were, I would expect someone of her “expertise on matters” would travel with a better photographer, but that’s just me.
And of course to get more hits, why not call the heading of the post Sex and the Saudis? I mean it should sell, I guarantee you that.
The pictures were staged contradictions, if investigative journalism had the aim to inform and educate, this has failed miserably.
Look at me, I'm so sad I am in Saudi and instead of going to the desert I decided to pose next to a painting in a museum all covered up
But when I did go to the desert to pose with an Arab man, I decided I did not need to cover up
This Saudi man who shall remain nameless (but liked to be called Jack) said he liked "girls with the smell of the United States"
I am not sure about that, you know my friend Fouad AlFarhan found his picture being used for a dating site.
And what is that I see? another picture of them in the desert uncovered? and is that a photographer with a DSLR sitting up there? Wouldn't he let you have any of the pictures?
The thing is, once you buy a DSLR you start noticing them everywhere 
I think I will cover up again and sit on a falic symbol
Oh look, we found a real camel, stop the car, let me cover my hair and take a picture with it
And let me just say they love Obama so much many have named their camels “Barack”. Of course she fails to say that Barrak is the Arabic word for the camel’s sitting action (barrak aljamal = the camel sat), and the word mabrook is derived from a sitting camel, congratulating a person with mabrook means may you have a sitting camel (1000 mabrook, one thousand camels) this of course was before currency and was meant to wish someone wealth.
President Obama’s name is derived from the Arabic “Baraka” which means blessed, close but different, however enough with the Arabic lessons
Even though I am at a private swimming pool, let me wear this silly thing and pose in it
I personally think the burkini is silly, but when you just wear and sit next to a swimming pool (a private swimming pool) to mock those who wear it… well that just says a lot about who you are.
Oh look, can you please wear an Abaya and sit on a stationary bike?
Ok, what is the reason for this photo?
And then there is this, I have no intention of going into the water with this, but I just like to make fun of them, Haha
Yet, in an ancient market not a museum, an old man fixes some traditional head flowers on a girl's head
Could this be a old man marrying a young girl euphemism (hint hint)?
Oh yeah, while at the pool I wore a full cover, yet at the couch I wear short sleeves
Oh yeah, I also wear short sleeves while playing golf while thinking I wish you were Tiger Woods... you know, Tiger Would! 
wink
Where is your Abaya in this picture?
"No Vickies only La Perla" as Diddy said, and notice the boots and the fire extinguisher behind her, just in case things get hot
Well, at the end of the day, after mocking them all, let me just relax and have a cigar, Cuban please
Unlike Big Will when he gets jiggy wit it “ciga-cigar right from Cuba-Cuba, I just bite it, it’s for the look I don’t light it” Maureen had her cigar and lit it.
I am not saying that Saudi does not have a long way to go (as do other places). I am just saying, there are many ways to say something constructive, and none of these were anywhere close to them.
As for now, I’ma just chill, ‘til the next episode.
Please note: I do not disagree with most of what she says, but these pictures (maybe they were for private use, but then again they were discussed on CNN) are mocking a country in a way which reminded me of something once upon a time called blackface.
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It was a few months ago my friend.
I remember the articles she wrote. They were much better than the pictures. Because they’re poorly executed. Next time we’ll ask her to bring a pro along.
You’d have to put your self in her shoes and think like an American in Saudi, in order to understand what she is trying to do. I don’t think it is all “bashing”. Maybe none of it is! Who knows. We’ll take it at face value.
she had a very busy schedule. She went everywhere.
Plus she is a writer, not a photographer
she’s nothing but a schmuck !
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you made a very good funny xD
I enjoyed your thoughts on the pictures. Thanks for sharing these.
P.S. I also enjoyed the mini-Arabic lesson especially this:
“the word mabrook is derived from a sitting camel, congratulating a person with mabrook means may you have a sitting camel ”
That’s neat to know!
well susanne, that’s wrong the word mabrook has nothing to do with the camel. it is actually the other way around. but this is not the only misinforming thing about what she wrote.
well Susanne, the word mabrook is not derived from a setting camel. it’s actually the other way around. but this is not the only misinforming thing about this whole thing.
I’m American, have never been to Saudi Arabia, and even I wondered about the disappearing and reappearing abaya. Thanks for the hilarious takedown!
Re: the main post:
Qusay–I do believe you have been rather harsh with Ms Dowd. Perhaps you were biased by your misunderstanding of the interview she did with the deeply insightful Ms Behar. It seems you object to Saudis being referred to as aliens, both in their nature and by their behaviour, in other words in both essentialist and existentialist terms. You seem to doubt Ms Dowd’s capacities as an investigative journalist, when she has clearly been able to detect that Saudi is in the southern hemisphere, and currently enjoying winter (in June), when so many others have misplaced it northwards and falsely believe it is summer there. Perhaps you resent that the temperature in winter in June was accurately described as 150 degrees (F).
You surely must admit that it would be hard to argue with her assertion that Saudi is the most closed place on earth for a tourist to enter, as I am sure it is harder than North Korea; or especially that it is the hardest place for a woman tourist to enter, because, of course, the 2 women journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were so well received in North Korea, that only Al Gore and Bill Clinton teamed together again could persuade the 2 of them to leave, even if reluctantly. Perhaps being one of those who displaces Saudi into the northern hemisphere you have misunderstood geo-politics as well.
You would do well to bear in mind that Ms Dowd has visited Saudi 3 times. The first 2-week visit was at the invitation of the Saudi Foreign Minister to any NYT journalist who wished to visit post 9/11 to, as she so eloquently put it, discover that not all Saudis are terrorists even if 15/19 are. The second time, George W Bush and the NYT wisely requested her presence in the press corps on his official state visit in light of her vast prior knowledge. In other words, Ms Dowd is well placed to do investigative journalism on the compelling topic of tourism there, especially in light of the Saudi government initiative to increase tourism within Saudi by Saudis.
Surely you consider Ms Dowd sufficiently Saudi after her weeks spent there as a guest of the Saudi government, and in the press entourage of George W Bush on an official state visit? If, following those 2 stays, which also gave her historical perspective (2001, then 2002), Ms Dowd deems internal tourism as the most pressing issue, I hardly think it is your place to disagree. She is, after all, an investigative journalist with the famous Grey Lady, or as non-Americans refer to it, the New York Times.
In that light, it is rather shocking, to say the least, that you should tamper with her oeuvre–both text and pictures. It is a very textured and nuanced tableau such that privileging some photos over the others denies the integrity of the whole, and falsifies the accurate portrayal of Saudi that the sequence and composition of each motif provides. Your critical attitude toward, as you call it, “staged contradictions” has seemingly blinded you to deeper truths.
For example, you have deliberately left out the portrayal of maternal figures in Saudi, despite announcing Ms Dowd’s considerable feminist efforts, in your title, “yo Mama”. Photo #11 is clearly meant to include Saudi mothers among the “Mama Bravo cooks while terrorism and civilian deaths rage about her” heroines. This is indubitably a flattering portrait–just ask any Libyan. Its accuracy is beyond question, as I do detect a saliq (or seleek as some prefer) in preparation. Perhaps you have never tasted Saudi cuisine, and so couldn’t have known. Photo #22 clearly shows the matriarch of the typical Saudi family in her contemporary Saudi designer attire. Perhaps you have been out of the country too long, or you were too busy lowering your gaze to notice, even though it is clearly captioned “matriarch”.
Ms Dowd kindly included 2 photos (#3 and #9) of Saudi safety signs, both addressing women’s apparel, even captioning them highly respectfully, yet you have not included them here. One might think that you suspect Ms Dowd of mocking Saudi safety considerations regarding both women’s personal safety and state security. This, of course, must be (yet another) misunderstanding on your part, as Ms Dowd is a highly respected feminist. She even proved it in the interview with her lamentation of poor Saudi girls deprived of Barbies, only pretending to demure to Ms Behar’s recognition of the psychological damaged Barbie is presumed to have inflicted on American women. Or don’t you want Saudi girls to have equal opportunities in the development of eating disorders?
I pass over your failure to appreciate that Ms Dowd is pictured sitting on a big gun because she is a big gun; and, your obvious sensitivity to the quotation marks around “seven star” in the caption of the hotel room pictured in #6. It is as if she hadn’t chosen the most Aladdin decorated room (done especially for tourists) and highlighted how rare a seven star hotel could be in the American imagination of Saudi, yet giving proof of its existence. Perhaps Jeddawi chauvinism blinded you.
I pass over these lapses (and others) only to come to the linguistic point, of your, ahem…”Arabic”. Fortunately Ms Dowd’s normal readers, not the aliens, are blessed with the knowledge that Baraka is, in the case of Barack Obama, a SWAHILI word disassociated from Arabs and Islam. In writing “blesse” are you implying sotto voce that Barack is blessé [wounded, injured, harmed]? Is that some sort of propaganda comment on his current political standing? Are you one of those bogans ?
Finally, Ms Dowd has obviously made an effort to adopt the pallor of the sun-protected Saudi woman with her white-face makeup in #26, yet you didn’t even bother to acknowledge it. You must have missed the obvious idealization of Vit D deficiency, osteoporosis, depression, obesity and ANEMIA in the Saudi woman that such pallor represents. Sad that any American woman with a blog could see that instantly, yet others miss it entirely, or omit it deliberately in an obvious attempt to besmirch Ms Dowd. It is a clear representation of a death mask, one so beloved of 19th century oeuvres idealizing the tuberculine heroine, and an obvious honour to Saudi medicine and culture. Or haven’t you been reading your Susan Sontag lately?
Hopefully Ms Dowd never suffers the slings and arrows of reading your misrepresentation and misappropriation of her exposition. However, she is a big enough gun to handle it, I am sure.
LOL LOL LOL
LOL LOL LOL
Seriously one couldn’t make this stuff–Dowd’s piece– up if one were trying for highly marketable, pseudo-feminist, pseudo-intellectual propaganda. Many have tried and failed, with the exception of the Sex in the City franchise, (more on that chez moi, anon). Ms Dowd obviously suffers from Sex in the City2 travel/clothing/success envy, in which case she should have just gone to Morocco like “the girls” did. Then again, as a reputedly “serious” journalist purporting to write non-fiction, she did have to spend 10 days in Saudi.
Excellent post as usual!
Re: your note in red:
Having spent 0 days in Saudi, I still beg to differ with you that Maureen Dowd has been in any way accurate about Saudi. Her mocking tone, and superficial sliding through every stereotype that would appeal to a mainstream American audience undermines any credibility she may have by being there “on the ground” as an investigative reporter examining what Saudis think make good tourist spots (as she said in the CNN interview). If she were capable of it, she would have been in harem garb sitting on a camel a la Paris Hilton, Sara Jessica Parker. Each caption contains a more or less obvious twist that ironizes the “truth” beyond recognition. Why the quotes around “seven star” except to say, “yes the hotel has a seven star rating, but isn’t that a ridiculous proposition, just look at this room, and how could Saudi ever be seven star anyway”? Why feature only 3 real Saudi women and in such an unflattering way: full cover on a stationery bike; overweight and unchic, compared to Martha Stewart in the caption, while the banner under her image reads “civilian deaths…Darfur rebels sign truce deal with Sudan”, convenient reminders of terrorism, which is engrained in the American psyche as by definition Muslim; and a “matriarch” in traditional clothing portrayed as risible, as if to mock the idea of any type of female power in Saudi, and Saudi heritage at the same time? As you pointed out, who knows if Jack goes by Jack and likes the smell of American women? Maybe she chose not to be able to pronounce Jamal, and suggested Jack. Maybe she asked him about American women and he couldn’t find the word for perfume. Maybe she made it all up. I know a Jamal who spent a summer in France as Jacques, so he could fit in better. He was 14, it was important to him then to pass for French and underplay that he was half Moroccan and half German raised in francophone society in Morocco.
I also beg to differ that the photos were for personal use. I think rather she overestimates the competencies of her assistant, and/or the point was to be 2 women in Saudi, “whose only crime in Saudi is to be women”, and to capitalize on the Sex in the City2 analogy and success. As you also point out, there were better photographers available, as there were for Sex in the City2. The façade of just being any 2 girl tourists exploring what it is like to travel around Saudi has to be made, to better help the reader to suspend disbelief. That suspension of disbelief is a requirement both of fiction and of propaganda, ie falling into believing this is the real Saudi and an accurate portrayal of it. No schools? No hospitals? No grocery stores? No houses? No factories? No farms? Just a bunch of women in black on sand dunes?
Your blackface analogy is spot on. My question is why this type of stereotyping is not only tolerated but encouraged. But we all know why, so it is a rhetorical question.
I think your post serves an important function to remind all of that phenomenon.
I don’t think anyone can produce something about Saudi Arabia in a manner that would be acceptable to its people. Ever.
Come to think of it, that applies to ANY country/city. No?
Btw, we did an interview with Big Hass (whom I learned about from your blog!) here:
http://diana-speaks.blogspot.com
she was so ignorant, not only in almost half what she said.
But mostly in the way she speakes about Saudis.
Typical !!
you make me laugh!
typical narrow minded westerner who judges other cultures by his/ her own standards. i really hate this type mentality. I hate chauvinists in general. i think people outside the u.s should start judging u.s culture by their own local standards as well.
this woman obviously thinks she can get famous and maybe rich doing this stupid kind of reporting. i hope she fails.
why can’t she walk into a mall in the u.s or a college campus with her camera and report to u.s on why do young females feel the need to show their butt cracks to the world in order to make a “fashion statement” or to feel like they are “in style” instead of traveling halfway around the world to do this stupid peace of trashy work?
of course they don’t see all the trash in their own backyard but they like clearly see the what’s in other peoples backyards.
typical narrow minded westerner who judges other cultures by his/ her own standards ( you are weird you don’t live your lives like we do bla bla bla) i really hate this type of mentality. I hate chauvinists in general. i think people outside the u.s should start judging u.s culture by their own local standards as well !!
this woman obviously thinks she can get famous and maybe rich doing this stupid kind of reporting. i hope she fails.
you can make any country or culture look bad if you decide to do this type of crappy dishonest reporting.
why can’t she walk into a shopping mall in the u.s or a college campus with her camera and report to u.s on why do young females feel the need to show their butt cracks to the world in order to make a “fashion statement” or to feel like they are “in style” instead of traveling halfway around the world to do this stupid peace of trashy work?
In my opinion, people who are really interested to know a country or a new culture know where to look for reliable information.
And through your blog you have the opportunity to do it.
What is shown by CNN are only stupid stereotypes, that’s it.