inadequate
Fascinating reading: the author of A Rose In The Desert, that unbelievably fawning article about the Assads published in March 2011 in Vogue, writes how she was duped and pushed into it and of the reality of her time in Syria.
Good, but not good enough. Certain things are completely unfair: Joan Juliet Buck lost her job at Vogue more or less because of the embarrassment caused by the article, when publishing it was clearly an editorial screw-up, not a writerly one. She wrote it before the Arab Spring and made a few ineffectual attempts at suggesting maybe not to publish as time went on.
But that just tells us that accepting the assignment in the first place was dumb. Somehow, the author allowed herself to be convinced to write it on the vaguest of reassurances (that the Assads were not too bad; that it was only a 'cultural' article) which five minutes of stern reflection and wikipediaing would have easily dissolved. When the author was sent, there was no real hint of the Arab Spring, and nearly every country in the Middle East had a dictatorship, what's new? If no-one else is making a fuss, human rights abuses are not actually a thing, and she can't be blamed for not really clocking it. Riiiiight.
The author tries to make up for her lack of criticality and morals in the first article, by adopting a portentous, knowing tone in the second one. Unfortunately this doesn't fly either, unable to tell the difference between genuine issues with sub-racist characterisations:
'An aesthete who went to Syria for its ruins raved about Damascus, mentioned in passing some men seen hanged outside the Four Seasons Hotel, and then raved about Palmyra.
I should have said no right there and then.'
OK, fine, good admission.
'Syria. The name itself sounded sinister, like syringe, or hiss.'
It's a country name. It has sibilants. Which of course means ... no, that's it. It means absolutely fuck all.
'in the dark early-evening streets, I felt uneasy. Mustached men stood in our path, wearing shoes from the 1980s and curiously ill-fitting leather jackets over thick sweaters.'
I would have thought it was the hanged men outside the Four Seasons that made you uneasy, but fine. This is Vogue, after all, middle eastern men in unfashionable clothes are so alien to you you actually perceive them as a threat.
Let's bear in mind this is the apologist article. (She mentions the sinister, badly-dressed middle eastern men in the original article too, of course!)
So, I understand that in this case, Vogue took vacuity and ignorance beyond its usual threshold of luxury bubble creation, and into outright political whitewash. I understand that you worked for these guys for 28 years. But, YOU WORKED FOR THESE GUYS FOR 28 YEARS. Why are you surprised when they drop you like last season's (insert fashion metaphor here, I'm too dowdy to even attempt one).
Not a lot of sympathy here. She's been so morally numbed by a dizzyingly upper class world, that with all the access to information and resources that she has, she couldn't make a decent decision on an obvious matter, and is now asking for sympathy because the parasites who hired her made her take the bullet.
Good, but not good enough. Certain things are completely unfair: Joan Juliet Buck lost her job at Vogue more or less because of the embarrassment caused by the article, when publishing it was clearly an editorial screw-up, not a writerly one. She wrote it before the Arab Spring and made a few ineffectual attempts at suggesting maybe not to publish as time went on.
But that just tells us that accepting the assignment in the first place was dumb. Somehow, the author allowed herself to be convinced to write it on the vaguest of reassurances (that the Assads were not too bad; that it was only a 'cultural' article) which five minutes of stern reflection and wikipediaing would have easily dissolved. When the author was sent, there was no real hint of the Arab Spring, and nearly every country in the Middle East had a dictatorship, what's new? If no-one else is making a fuss, human rights abuses are not actually a thing, and she can't be blamed for not really clocking it. Riiiiight.
The author tries to make up for her lack of criticality and morals in the first article, by adopting a portentous, knowing tone in the second one. Unfortunately this doesn't fly either, unable to tell the difference between genuine issues with sub-racist characterisations:
'An aesthete who went to Syria for its ruins raved about Damascus, mentioned in passing some men seen hanged outside the Four Seasons Hotel, and then raved about Palmyra.
I should have said no right there and then.'
OK, fine, good admission.
'Syria. The name itself sounded sinister, like syringe, or hiss.'
It's a country name. It has sibilants. Which of course means ... no, that's it. It means absolutely fuck all.
'in the dark early-evening streets, I felt uneasy. Mustached men stood in our path, wearing shoes from the 1980s and curiously ill-fitting leather jackets over thick sweaters.'
I would have thought it was the hanged men outside the Four Seasons that made you uneasy, but fine. This is Vogue, after all, middle eastern men in unfashionable clothes are so alien to you you actually perceive them as a threat.
Let's bear in mind this is the apologist article. (She mentions the sinister, badly-dressed middle eastern men in the original article too, of course!)
So, I understand that in this case, Vogue took vacuity and ignorance beyond its usual threshold of luxury bubble creation, and into outright political whitewash. I understand that you worked for these guys for 28 years. But, YOU WORKED FOR THESE GUYS FOR 28 YEARS. Why are you surprised when they drop you like last season's (insert fashion metaphor here, I'm too dowdy to even attempt one).
Not a lot of sympathy here. She's been so morally numbed by a dizzyingly upper class world, that with all the access to information and resources that she has, she couldn't make a decent decision on an obvious matter, and is now asking for sympathy because the parasites who hired her made her take the bullet.