Allahu Akbar? Not If He Made You, He’s Not
November 6, 2009 in Breaking News, Crazy Wingnut News
I just posted the rant below at that other site in response to the news that mass killer Nidah Hasan was yelling “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) while shooting up the Fort Hood army base yesterday. It strikes me that we’re at a really strange place in our history if we need to go looking for reasons to be divided over a tragedy like this. Apparently, the right is feeling triumphal or something. I don’t get it. Read the rest of this entry →
There have been a number of very gratifying requests for a snapshot from the dismal time I spent in Lagos, Nigeria. This is not that post, but rather, a fictionalized account of an experience I had in Damascus. Enjoy.
1. When I was 23 years old, and had graduated from university, lived at home for a year and found no opportunity in Detroit, I moved to New York to find a job in some field associated with either publishing or advertising. For weeks my situation looked hopeless as it had at home; I was making $4.15 an hour loading trucks in the garment district. Every time I spoke with my parents–my father a Baptist minister, mother, a teacher—they assured me that everyone in the church was praying that I would find “the right job.” Amazingly, I landed a job as a junior promotion copywriter for a major magazine, but the ‘rents were less than thrilled when I told them it was Playboy. “What can you do,” I told them. “Prayer works.”
