Saturday, August 18, 2007

Al-Arabiya TV has 30 minute daily segment in which the press is reviewed, and discussed with a visiting professor or journalist (always a male of course). The host (Jizelle Abu Jawdah) is quite good. Very competent. Today, she hosted Lebanese journalist `Adil Malik (a relatively moderate journalist who started with the state TV in Lebanon and started the genre of Arab documentaries in the 1970s when he moved to London after the civil war. He married a Druze woman from the Jumblat family, and the family opposed the marriage until Kamal Jumblat intervened). Malik, of course, now works for Saudi media. He said: 1) that Iyad `Allawi (former puppet prime minister/car bomber/Saddam's henchman/embezzler-in-Yemen) has the "best visionary perception" of Iraq; 2) he supported the Lebanese ban of a play because it it unhealthy for the Lebanese to remember the civil war. Angry Arab watched the program and I could see him getting angrier and angrier.