On The Media is produced by:
For several years, Shibley Telhami has been conducting public opinion polls in six Arabic countries, asking people about their views of, among other things, American diplomatic efforts and policies toward the Middle East. He then presented the results to White House officials shortly before Obama's speech. Telhami talks to us about some key findings.
O.K., this guy wasn't, strictly speaking, from the Middle East but an Islamic scholar from Columbia U. was on Hardball the evening of the speech and he used a phrase I never ever imagined I would hear from a man raised in the Middle East referring to a President of my country. "The Greek ideal of the philosopher-king," the scholar intoned when speaking of Obama's engagement over the Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty and Iran's right to peaceful nuclear power. Now, there's when I first felt real pride for America!
Even if I am dead set against even peaceful use of nuclear power and have been since I figured out, from an older cousin's physics text books at age 7, how it worked!
Of course, when I think of David Lozell Martin's "Our American King", I also naturally think of Robert A. Heilein's "Farnam's Freehold", only proving I can make obscure references both new and older readers will remain puzzling over long after they look them up, should they wish to bother.
Please keep your comments relevant to this entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments on On the Media are moderated. On the Media reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the onthemedia.org Comment Guidelines before posting.
Back to Episode
