Very, very atypical and interesting post at Juan Cole's place today:

The Arab singer Shams shows her disdain of George W. Bush in an MTV-style video clip that is popular in the Arab world these days. She says, "Hi! How are you?" as a cardboard Bush smiles and raises his shoulders idiotically. "No one is like you," she adds, "and there certainly aren't two of you." She shakes her head in front of a White House stage prop. [snip]

What is most striking of all is the tone of familiarity and intimacy along with the contempt. Bush has become an Arab leader, like Mubarak or Asad, and is subject to all the same parodying and jokes that they are in the Arab street.

Another straw in the wind is that Shams is Kuwaiti, and Kuwaitis were for a long time the most pro-American Arabs, grateful for having been rescued from Saddam in the Gulf War. Some Kuwaiti op-ed writers have taken strong exception to the video.

And, on the other side of hybridity (all-mixed-up-ness), she has signed a $2 mn contract with an American production company called "Surprise," after she was abruptly and mysteriously dropped by Rotana....When I hear Bush and Cheney keep talking about "getting the job done" in Iraq, the thing that most amazes me is that they don't know they are laughingstocks in the region. It isn't just that they are widely hated, or distrusted, or viewed as failures. It is that people are laughing at them. No surge can fix that.

Sez it all, eh?

And as long as we're over at the good professor's shop, here's a hopeful note of progress on the political front:

Al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that a tit for tat debate broke out in the Iraqi parliament on Sunday. Shiite delegates from the United Iraqi Alliance demanded the expulsion of all Arabs from Iraq.*
In response, the Sunni speaker of the house, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, suggested that "non-Arabs" also be expelled.**

Hot damn, a solution at last!

Oh, well, I guess I should add the parts I trimmed in the interests of snarkitude...note asterisks above:

*By "Arabs," they mean the foreign nationals of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, etc. These persons are Sunnis and the Shiites are implying that they tend to be recruited for terrorism.

** by which he meant Iranians.

Sigh. Oh well, it sounded like a good idea at first, dammit. I mean think about it, you get rid of all the (a)Arabs and (b) non-Arabs and I suspect things would really start to make progress on the Iraqi Freedom Front, meaning Exxon and BP could finally bring in their Filipino crews to get the oil flowing again. Of course that would probably bring the price down, so somehow I doubt that this plan will gain any more traction than all the other mystical confabulations currently under discussion. I think i'll go listen to music. Maybe Shams.