PrintMay 7, 2011
Wintour's Whitewash: Vogue on my Mind
While traveling to Ohio to screen our AFDI/SIOA documentary, The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks, at Ohio University, tired after finishing my next book (coming out September 6), and looking for an escape from the Obama/Osama circus, I picked up a Vogue magazine at the airport. I thought I would wax nostalgic for things that once meant a good deal to me. Instead, I ran straight into a prime example of how the mainstream media is whitewashing Islamic supremacism and forcing it upon Americans.
I wanted to get away for a brief respite -- how better? The May issue of Vogue has a delicious Reese Witherspoon on the cover. Rifling through the pages, this year's models, all exquisite and thin, look fresh and glamorous. All that never disappoints. And mind you, when I turn away from the work, I do forget about it. But it seems there is no escaping it. Even when one puts one's mind to it, it's almost impossible, because we are assaulted by the Islamic supremacist narrative everywhere we turn -- if not by the supremacists themselves, then by their apologists and other useful idiots.
The propaganda infuses everything, and I doubt that the majority of Americans have any clue how railroaded they are. Perhaps this kind of dangerous drivel is published all the time and I am out of the loop, as fashion was one of the things that did not survive in my life after the Islamic jihad declared war on my great country on September 11, 2001.
In this issue is an article entitled "Cairo on my Mind." The story is written by a "Carol Sidky," who "fell in love with Egypt at eighteen" when she volunteered for the British International School in Cairo as a "Project Trust volunteer." She goes on to wax poetic about the country where her husband married his secretary when Sidky was eight months pregnant (it seems she was satisfied with the never explained "plausible explanation").
Sidky dismisses this as an Egyptian thing, when in fact she knows, and Anna Wintour knows, that it is an Islamic thing. It is the Sharia. She damn near loses her children, but flees instead and then laments her "exile" from her adopted home of Egypt. Sidky further describes how a man and woman cannot check into a hotel unless they are married, and how adulterous women get jailed for at least two years (though the Sharia punishment can be far more punitive).
She speaks of stories of "intrusive morality policing," all without ever mentioning Islam, Sharia, or gender apartheid in this dhimmi puff piece. Sidky goes on to paint Egypt's "revolutionary road" as pure fantasy. Her hope for the new Egypt is "a new constitution" (what's new about Sharia, which has already been decided will be part of the system of governance?). She envisions a democratically elected parliament with a broad base of political parties, and more equitable distribution of wealth (of course). Nowhere in the article does Sidky accurately or honestly portray the rise of the jihad and its implications for that country, or the women and children who are forced to live under their brutal boot. The omissions from Sidky's article are striking. Nowhere does she mention that over 96% of the women in Egypt have been clitorectomized. No mention is made of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is clearly in the lead to seize control of the newly belligerent Egypt, or the calls for the abandonment of the 30-year peace with the Jewish state of Israel. Instead, she relates the revolution to an "exquisite dinner" that very few Egyptians would be able to afford, and oh, how did she miss that stunning injustice all these years that she has been living, loving, submitting in Egypt?
The culture is the enemy. Call them out on it. This outrages me, because I expect more from Wintour. She is tough as nails, eating bullets for breakfast. I loved the way she stood down PETA, and frankly stands down anyone who crosses her, though her treatment of Grace Coddington is unforgivable (clearly Grace is the heart and soul of Vogue). But that for another day. Wintour knows. Wintour is British; she knows firsthand how Islamic supremacism is destroying the fabric of her native (and now adopted) country. She knows. Vogue does photo shoots all over the world. They are an eyewitness to the brutal subjugation of women in Muslim countries.
Clearly Wintour is not what she works hard to appear to be -- tough, modern, and independent, unafraid. No maverick she. Another railroad worker for the jihad train. More's the pity.
Perhaps Wintour is afraid of jihad. Fine, but don't shill for them. Don't cover for them. You are a women's fashion magazine, for G-d's sake; be responsible. Teach. Profile Wafa Sultan -- do her hair, give her Chanel red lips, and let her tell the truth while looking fantab. Seriously.
Are there no courageous heroes anywhere in positions of power in the cultural landscape? Anyone? Anywhere?
