From Sunday to Sunday

For me, one of the pleasures of life – that is, the pleasures that are fit for publication – is to read the Sunday editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I lived in the United States for many years, and I used to wait anxiously for Sunday to come to read the two papers. Then modern technology came, allowing me to read them every day, online. My visit to New York to attend the sixty-sixth session of the UN General Assembly, and then to Washington to visit a friend in the weekend on Sunday, gave me the opportunity to read the print editions of both papers, including all their supplements on tourism, travel, cars, entertainment and the theater, and even real estate, fashion, sports, book reviews...and many, many more. It is indeed very fine journalism. However, every rose has its thorn. Although both newspapers are liberal and moderate par excellence, when it comes to topics on Israel, they often run pieces by far right writers, including neocon extremists and Likudnik sympathizers with a fascist occupation state that remains the first and most important cause for the ongoing anti-Semitism around the world. By contrast with op-eds that contain wheat as well as chaff, the news is above suspicion, very much like Caesar’s wife. No matter how annoyed one may get with some op-ed contributors, the news is always accurate (in fact, there have been scandals involving journalists in both papers, journalists who had fabricated news, but they were soon exposed and fired, and they are the exception, not the rule). I shall return in a few days to a lesson in journalism I had stumbled upon courtesy of the Public Editor in the New York Times, involving the controversy surrounding the NYT correspondent in Israel, Ethan Bronner. But today, I shall content myself with a quick tour of the material that has since made me long for the two newspapers, from Sunday to Sunday. The news that concerns us is always present in the papers, news from Yemen to Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The most important aspect of such news is its accuracy. For one thing, the newspapers' methodology stipulates that no story can be run except if the newspaper can verify it from two independent sources. While political news in the papers is somewhat predictable, as television would have probably beaten them to it, leaving only the details to be published, it is the other news that attracts a reader like me to an American newspaper. Last Sunday, I read in the arts and entertainment supplement, a report about the renewed interest in Islamic art, especially in artifacts hidden well away from visitors at the Metropolitan Museum, or 'treasures' that include, for example, a Tughra –i.e. a seal - that dates back to Suleiman the Magnificent in the year 1555 AD. Meanwhile, David Ignatius in the op-ed section of the Washington Post made it up for me, for encountering the likes of the Likudnik extremist Charles Krauthammer; Ignatius wrote a piece about Obama's backtracking on his declared policy in the Middle East, which is what we say too. I then found worthwhile information otherwise absent in the Arab Press, in the report by the newspaper on high real estates in Baghdad, where some properties were found to be even more expensive than similar properties in Paris. Many things have remained the same since the time I was living in America in the eighties, while other things have changed. In both papers, for instance, there used be a supplement that published photos from engagements or weddings, and I used to read it trying to find Arabic names. Today, I read news of gay (same-sex) marriages and pictures from them. I hence found out from the New York Times supplement that Steve and Matthew got married, and so did Charlene and Lynn, Craig and Stephen and Annabel and Emily. I am not preaching, and I have no right to object to American laws, and all I want to say is that I do not understand why such ‘marriages’ are being promoted. In the Sunday Magazine, there was a report illustrated with many photos of Muammar Gaddafi’s years and the fall of Tripoli. In another magazine, I was surprised to find a report on nightlife in Beirut, and it seems that the reporter’s young writer had moved from restaurant to nightclub to bar, with a group of young Lebanese men and women seeking fun amid the successive political crises. Perhaps the title chosen for the report accurately reflects its substance, as it said ‘Dancing on the Edge’. But there is another Beirut, or ‘several Beiruts', and the writer seems to have contented herself with the love of life among the new generation. In book reviews, there were many that would be of interest to Arabs, including ‘The Quest- Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World' By Daniel Yergin, winner of the Nobel Prize, reviewed by Fareed Zakaria. In short, the book argues that energy is the most sought-after commodity today. This confirms the significance of this weapon in the hands of Arab oil-producing countries, and its ability to change traditional political and economic realities around the world. Who knows? Maybe we will one day. khazen@alhayat.com