What an impression Omar Sharif apparently made, in his filmic glory. Schoolgirls liked to play their favorite record -- the "Lara Theme" -- endlessly, and imagine her (that is to say their) Slavic (Egyptian) lover, the quietly passionate Dr. Zhivago, as played by Omar Sharif. Schoolboys, on the other hand, dreamed of the cheekbones of La Skulastaya, Julie Christie. Adults who already knew that the Slavic Soul was something special, and so unlike that of shallow Westerners, could now become acquainted with, and fall in love with, the Russian countryside. Those special Russian snows, that endless Russian plain through which a choo-choo or kukushka would chug, taking Dr. Zhivago somewhere, somewhere....
Unfortunately, that endless Russian plain, and those special Russian snows, were filmed not outside Moscow, perhaps on the field of Borodino, but rather an hour or so outside Madrid, in the Sierra Nevada. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that even the indoor scenes, those palaces and apartments all lit by flickering romantic candles or half-light, and the mock-Smolniy, or the mock-Winter Palace (I don't remember if I even saw the movie and certainly can't remember the details), may have been filmed in Rome, at Cinecitta.
Deceptive, those film-makers, aren't they: pulling that wool over our eyes by giving us Phalangist instead of Bolshevik snow to swoon over, and Roman rather than Russian interiors.
What was it that Yeats wrote for that special Dr. Zhivago edition of Variety? Yes, I remember:
"How can I, that girl standing there/My attention fix/On Roman or on Spanish/or on bogus Russian pix?"
There are the mislineations of memory. And I may also have transposed a few words. It has been known to happen.
In any case, in his recent interview, Omar Sharif makes the following statement:
"I lived in America for a long time. Only 10% of all Americans have a passport. In other words, 90% never left America," said Sharif. "They don't know anything."
This remark is not only condescending, but wrong. It is not necessary to have a passport, nor to travel, to discover certain things. The greatest Foreign Minister of 19th century England, Lord Palmerston, never left England.
Nor is it sufficient to have travelled. I know, I have met, I have seen on site, all kinds of Americans, from Junior-Year-Abroad Junior-Leaguers in Paris, at Reid Hall, thinking they are soaking up Paris, to the kind of professors who are on their fourteenth trip to Japan to discuss something -- Total Quality Management, Just-in-Time Delivery of Supplies, whatever is the latest HBS fad -- but who have never sunk beneath the surface of life.
One has to be well-prepared. One has to be able to make sense of things. John Esposito has been to the Middle East many times. So has Robert Fisk. So what?
Those who haven't used their passports may, or may not, have learned something, even quite enough, about the nature of Islam. It depends.
Omar Sharif shows, in his dismissal of the knowledge that Americans possess, an unseemly condescension. Does he think that the well-traveled necessarily are more intelligent? Does he think, for example, that the peoples of Western Europe, constantly moving about within Europe and to exotic climes and resorts, have a better grasp of the Middle East, which means a better grasp of the one thing that he, Omar Sharif, does not dare to mention or to label, that is, Islam?
For if people in the Middle East do not understand or support the idea of democracy, it is because the spirit and letter of Islam goes against democracy, for the Muslim is seen not as a citizen, expressing his will at election time, exercising his rights, but as a "slave of Allah" who is used to, who is encouraged in every way to, submit to the authority of Allah, and then to other authorities, those despots who, as long as they are good Muslims, must be obeyed.
This is what Omar Sharif, ne Shalhoub, cannot dare to say. But he can say something that is true. And that is that Bush and others in the Administration were remarkably self-assured, though remarkably ignorant, in their messianic sentimentalism.
That he's got dead right.
How many more Americans would have visited the Middle East in the last thirty years, were it not for the pictures of an old man in a wheelchair being dumped overboard by Muslims, people shot dead in European airports by Muslims, people shot while visting the Pyramids, again by Muslims, people blown up while trying to help Muslims?
The list is endless.
Omar Sharif is ....... okay, an idiot. (don't want to offend anyone!) He's like most of Hollywood - just a pretty face with a lot of empty space behind those eyes and between those ears. If someone hadn't written that dialog for him and someone else hadn't told him where to stand and how to move, he would have been lost.
Immanuel Kant went no futher than 100 miles from his hometown (Konigsberg Germany)...
people shot while visting the Pyramids, again by Muslims
...Or shot while visiting the temple of Karnak, again by Muslims...
Immanuel Kant went no futher than 100 miles from his hometown (Konigsberg Germany)...
Which, if I'm not mistaken, is now Kaliningrad, Russia, in the Oblast of the same name, that strange little piece of Russia stuck between Poland and Lithuania.
Omar Sharif is ....... okay, an idiot. --PMK
I hear he's a professional gambler. Wow, that's so cool, isn't it? (sarc on).
As far as passports go, yeah, I needed one to visit Europe. But, I did NOT need one (just a copy of birth certificate) to visit Canada, Caribbean, and Mexico.
Omar - as you said in character in "Lawrence of Arabia," "We're just Barbarians." Well, you got that right. Stupid, too, concerning your Passport comment.
As Hugh commented, John Esposito has been to the ME many times - and never learned anything! (Except how to be a good Dhimmi. Wow - that's impressive!)
I'll never watch "Funny Girl" again. Mr. "Superior Peoples," Omar.
Pravilno vui spomnili - eto nazvanie i goroda i oblasti - Kaliningrad - Russian Federation
Bigfoot: "is now Kaliningrad, Russia, in the Oblast of the same name"
Correct
My brother and I pub-crawled the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland, with a side trip to Amsterdam, back in '77. We had a wonderful time.
Lasting impressions: Europeans know a lot more about how beer ought to be brewed, Americans know a lot more about proper plumbing and most American tourists should have their passports revoked.
God bless America. God save the Queen.
"Travel has broadened more behinds than minds." -Will Cuppy.
Learning comes through the intellect, not the landscape.
Omar seems unable to bridge the distinction.
Hugh,
I'm an American. I twice had a passport, but no more.
I traveled to Switzerland, the UK, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Grand Camen.
Everywhere I went I met people who wanted to come to the United States.
I once met a conductor on a London double-decker bus. A middle-aged rather attractive woman, she was originally a citizen of Italy who migrated to the UK. Her Italian accent was still heavy, but she spoke excellent English.
This woman told me she had only one ambition in her life. She wanted to die in the United States.
I once conducted a concert, illuminated by a huge bonfire, in a little remote village in the Swiss Alps. My performers were all memebers of the Pasadena, California, High School Band. We were there to represent the U.S.A. at the Fetes de Geneve in the summer of 1975.
As we finished our concert, which was cheered and applauded by hundreds of villagers who followed us as we marched and played through their tiny streets, our tour guide informed me that someone in the crowd requested that we play a Sousa march.
"Bullets and Bayonets" was in our tour repertoire. We played that march. The crowd cheered lustily as we finished. Then my tour guide announced to me that our Swiss audience wanted to hear "The Star Spangled Banner." I was astonished, nearly speechless.
I never saw my students stand so tall as on that night, when some 8,000 miles from home, in a foreign country, they played our national anthem to a rousing ovation. I still choke back tears, remembering how my students began to realize that night how precious it is to be an American Citizen.
Nay, it is not Americans never traveled abroad who know nothing - it is Omar Sharif who knows nothing.
Thanks for your great work, Hugh.
Omar is an idiot, and his brain has begun to atrophy. He's been irrelevant for years, and he's loking to get some publicity.
As for statistics.
http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2003/01/31/how_many_america.php
So. How many Egyptians own passports? How many Chinese? How many Indians? How many Iranians?
Of course the statisitics are meaningless.
But Omar won't let that get in the way of bagging out the US. Without whom his film career would have been stunted.
I think I have finally solved the problem of Hugh's true identity. He is Barney from the Simpsons ("And I say that England's greatest prime minister was Lord Palmerston!"). Hugh is not Wade Boggs ("Pitt the Elder!").
Omar is even more condescending about the Arabs when he flatly denies their capacity for democracy. He's essentially saying that Americans simply don't understand how backward the Arabs are. I'll drink to that.
Rite on, Hugh. I would rather be a lamp post in New York City than the Caliph of Araby (apologies to Popeye Doyle in The French Connection).
Not sure if Sharif is the sharpest knife in the drawer; here is what I found on wikipedia -- who knows if it's all true?
Yup, if this is true he is just a garden variety idiot; but I still like the movie Dr. Zhivago.
(P.S. Was that really Lara at the end of the movie where Zhivago has a stroke or heart attack after getting off the trolly?)
I believe it was Lao Tzu who observed that one can know the whole world and never leave his home. I rather doubt Mr. Sharif knows of, or has considered, this perspective on life.
The Variety-version of two lines ascribed to Yeats, with the relevance of "Roman" and "Spanish" taken care of by the advance-man, depends on a knowledge of the underlying poem, which goes like this:
Politics
“In our time the destiny of man
presents its meaning in political terms.”
-- Thomas Mann
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a traveled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
During the '80s, I lived in South Wales for 3 years and Waterloo, Belgium for 5 years. In Wales, we started a small factory near Blackwood in the Rhymney Valley north of Cardiff and needed some blinds for the offices. Being new to the area, we enlisted one of the local women whom we had hired assist us and asked her to go to Cardiff to help find the store. She was in her 50's and reluctant to go. As it turned out, she had never been to Cardiff in her life, and it was less than 20 miles away. Of the many local Welsh people whom I met and became friends with, most were like that and had not travelled extensively, or at all, but they were the absolute salt of the earth and most of them knew more about life and human nature in their little finger than Omar Sharif has learned in his entire lifetime of enlightened travels.
In Waterloo, the most extensively travelled and knowledgeable people were the ones living in the large American community there (American Corporations tend to send their best and brightest overseas - dumbos don't get to go). The locals were just like people everywhere -- concerned with their paychecks, homes, taxes, and families. Although they took most of August as vacation time, they knew no more, or no less than people anywhere. Hugh is right. Travel, in and of itself, although it exposes people to different places and cultures, teaches nothing. It is up to the individual to use the experience and take what he can from it.
One more proof that talented people are not necessarily intelligent people. Sarandon, Sheen (the whole bunch), Depp, Baldwin (Adam Baldwin ain't related), Streisand, ad nauseum.
One more thing, dammit, I do not need to visit a sewage treatment plant the know that it is full of . . .
Is it not amazing how people get so worked-up about a statement a movie star is making.
Who cares. I do believe that when you live a while in another country, you understand more, there way of thinking and their culture.
Not these fast 1 or 2 week trips, where the tourists are going. When you do that in third world countries, you do NOT see anything.
I liked most of his movies. But it has nothing to do with his irrelevant remarks.
Besides making movies and gambling, being around the Hollywood crowd, what else did he do here in the U.S.A.
Is it not amazing how people get so worked-up about a statement a movie star is making.
Who cares. I do believe that when you live a while in another country, you understand more, there way of thinking and their culture.
Not these fast 1 or 2 week trips, where the tourists are going. When you do that in third world countries, you do NOT see anything.
I liked most of his movies. But it has nothing to do with his irrelevant remarks.
Besides making movies and gambling, being around the Hollywood crowd, what else did he do here in the U.S.A.?
Jesus never travelled more than 200 miles from Nazareth....
I think that he's just trying to say that the average American, and that would cover the average westerner, doesn't know what it's like to live in an Islamic state. And isn't that true?
Look, forget the other stuff that he said, just be grateful that he is honest about the fact that Islam and democracy don't mix.
Here is the MEMRI clip of the interview.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1782.htm
He insults Americans, saying we can't find other countries on a map.
He says most of us never leave the US, except to go to Canada or Mexico.
I wonder how many goat herders have a passport?
How many travel around the world?
About finding countries on a map...the only problem I have is finding countries in Africa...the names keep changing. And Peking became Beijing etc. etc.
BTW, get a load of this.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/abdurrahimkashif/CQND
Interest,
Thanks for the link. We thought the b*tch would be a horrible VP choice, but then, on second thought, Ellison, or that other idiot, Carson (D7-IN), would be even far worse.
Help us all!
"I lived in America for a long time. Only 10% of all Americans have a passport. In other words, 90% never left America," said Sharif. "They don't know anything."
I hate to agree with Omar Sharif, but frankly, he's right. Most people in the U.S.- especially the young -- don't know the slightest thing about history or geography. Most couldn't point out Mexico or Canada on an unmarked map, or tell you anything about the founding fathers or the American revolution, so don't expect them to know anything about current world affairs.
That's the way the ideologues that control our educational systems like it. Blank minds are easier to fill with the latest political, social and moral views of the politically correct elitist.
It might shock some to know that Bush's "no child left behind" doesn't require students to know anything about Western or U.S. history. And you don't hear any complaints fron the educational establishment in this country about that.
This is not to suggest that students in Muslim societies know anything more. Their minds are as blank as anyone elses, which allows for an Islamic interpretation of anyone and anything. That's the way the Imams and Mullahs like it.
The question is, what society has the better excuse for this kind of ignorance, a liberal democratic society or a theocratic Islamic society?
I wouldn't be too hard on Omar. True he's telling a half-truth, but it's still half true.
BTW, get a load of this.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/abdurrahimkashif/CQND
Posted by: interestinconundrum at June 8, 2008 11:07 PM
Oh my God, this is too much! Barak made his loyalties very clear in his book when he said he would "stand with the muslims". The more I learn about this man, who is not an "African-American"; who is not descended from slaves; whose ancestors were slave traders, not slaves; the more terrifying the prospect of his being elected president becomes. He is a Marxist, a more radical leftist than Ted Kennedy or Hillary the Hag. His naivete, lack of experience, ignorance about foreign policy and foreign countries, and overall dearth of qualifications to be president are mind-boggling! But he's too slick to pick a muslim for V.P., especially another rookie like himself.
Obama is the perfect candidate for another job with an impressive title: Anti-Christ. He's the right age, has the requisite messianic charisma, hypnotic appeal, and an ability to mesmerize the masses with soothing, feel-good cliches while saying nothing substantive. Personally, I think he's a Manchurian Candidate but he could be the Anti-Christ; I guess time will tell.
I agree with Hugh that people who travel are no more intelligent, no more culturally aware, than those who haven't. I also agree with rational that we citizens of the U.S. are woefully undereducated about history, geography, and more specifically, Islam. Omar does have his point.
darcy mentioned "Lawrence of Arabia". I have thought often of that movie lately, and the scenes near the end, after Damascus has been taken. How the power and water systems began to fail under Arab control, and how tribal affiliation was much more important than any sense of national loyalty. The movie was made in 1962, before all of the current thought-control restrictions were in place. G*d knows it wasn't perfect, with its complete absence of the mention of the role of Islam in Arab culture, but it was far better than anything made these days.
I am sure that many of the very intelligent JW/DW contributors have noticed this, but in case any of you idiots (trolls) missed this, please allow me to explain: A very large portion of the US citizenry that travel overseas do not do so under a passport, this is because they’re in the US Military and do not require one. They are there to Save Your Ass! When you call them “ignorant” or any other pejorative you choose, remember they are there to help you. And when you turn against us, we are there to kill you. Yours truly… 1979 – 1988.
Omar's main point was how the Arabs prefer the tribal culture instead of democracy. So I agree with the poster rational. Many American school kids can't find France on a map. McCain keeps mixing up Sunni and Shia. And the president is hopeless in many foreign (and domestic) areas.
To a foreigner who speaks multiple languages (and many of them do), your average American will come across as pretty insulated from the world. So I give Omar a pass on this one.
Having taught college students from all over the world for over twenty years now, I can assure all posting here that while many American students are indeed ignorant of history and geography, so are many foreign students. In particular, I have found more American students knowledgeable of world history, particularly the European past, than foreigners are aware of American history, about which non-Americans have exhibited to me over the years stunning ignorance. One of my favorite examples (I have many) is of a Korean who spent many years in Britain before she came to college here and thus her English was very good. While speaking to her on one occasion, I made reference to the American Civil War. She responded with the question, "America had a civil war?" Oh yeah, I was astonished as I have been on numerous other occasions when speaking to young folks from overseas whose reputation for greater all around knowledge of the world compared to Americans I have determined to be mostly mythical.
"Jesus never travelled more than 200 miles from Nazareth...."
So...what of His ascension?
Omar Sharif was born a Catholic and converted to Islam for a piece of ass, when he married a Muslim woman.
He speaks ill of American because he can. He's a coward when speaking about Islam, which he never really practiced.
http://www.bravenewsworld.blogspot.com
Personally, I wish more Americans would travel abroad.
I spent twenty years in the military, and a few years after that as a military contractor. During that time, I have travelled all over the world, and I gotta tell ya, the more I see of other countries, the more I love the good ol' U. S. of A.
I really, REALLY wish that the Americans who spend so much of their time bad-mouthing their own country could really understand just how good we've got it here.
I think that he's just trying to say that the average American, and that would cover the average westerner, doesn't know what it's like to live in an Islamic state. And isn't that true?
Voltaire,
So? Not even your most advanced Westerners know what it's like to live in an Islamic state. They wouldn't want to know. It proves nothing.
The reverse is also true. Those who live in an Islamic state or even in most of the Islamic world have no conception of the US. They think we're the great satan.
Throughout history, most people never left their village, let alone the continent on which they were born. The human race still produced a lot of pretty smart people.
To a foreigner who speaks multiple languages (and many of them do), your average American will come across as pretty insulated from the world.
Bingo,
If that is how foreigners would judge Americans, it just shows how shallow their judgments can be.
Some bilingual and multilingual people are pretty stupid. Just look at President Bush.
If we were insulated from the world, we would still have two towers in lower Manhattan. We would never have lost people living and working in the Middle East to insulated Muslims.
North Korea aside, what country is more insulated from the world than Saudi Arabia? It has nothing to do with languages.
Another Fitzgerald classic.
Yes indeed, travel is like a hallucinogenic drug.
At the most it brings out what's inside of you. A Fisk and an Esposito will never produce anything of value, because their interests are different and their intentions prevents them from digging.
Many go a Nile cruises to Egypt, but it doesn't bring them back more knowledgable or more educated about the country or the inhabitants, who have nothing whatsoever to do with the people who built the pyramides. The same goes for Turkey, where cheap, Euro-taxpayers subsidised hotels provide 4 and 5 star comfort and shelter from the real Turkey, which some of the far left (red-green) politicians have no interest in discovering.
On the other hand, I have witnessed the 'fearful apathy and the degraded sensualism and the fanatical frenzy,' (Churchill) first hand, and worse, and it was an eye-opener, although I was unable that time to put it in words the way Churchill did.
Yes, one needs to be prepared. And that preparedness rarely, if at all, comes from travel. In the worst case travelling can blind one to the ugly realities of Islam, when covered up with the generous hospitality and the faked friendliness of those slaves of Allah.
Posted by: INFIDELATLARGE at June 8, 2008 5:53 PM.
Right on Infidel...and now we get Barrack Hussein Obama...
darcy mentioned "Lawrence of Arabia". I have thought often of that movie lately, and the scenes near the end, after Damascus has been taken. How the power and water systems began to fail under Arab control, and how tribal affiliation was much more important than any sense of national loyalty.
That happened to be exactly the point Sharif was making, a point disregarded by the masterminds who launched the Iraq Attack thinking that "all people are longing for democracy" and that they could replace Saddam with a Western-style liberal democracy that would be up and running after a short occupation.
Nobody looks for ratiocination from an actor. Of course the guy is a dimwit, otherwise he wouldn't be good at pretending to be someone else.
The David Lean Doctor Zhivago, by the way, is a very bad dramatization of Boris Pasternak's novel. For years after I saw it I assumed that the novel was pretty much on the level of a Harlequin romance, and I was even surprised to find that it had actually been written by a Russian.
What exactly an Egyptian was doing in the role (alongside all those equally unconvincing Brits) I never did figure out, big watery eyes notwithstanding.
In any case, don't look for thoughtful comment from actors. They say things like: the earthquake in China serves them right for how they have treated Tibet.
How easily dismissive Sharif can be. He might fall into that category of life imitating art, wherein one believes in the sophistication he or she is given to portray. He seems to be reaching for a place among that intellectual and political clerisy; and those others who have found ranking with dancing dogs and performing penguins on the stage and screen.
He reminds me of the person who had accomplished the ability to speak eight languages; saying nothing in each.
Wellington,
I'm not all that shocked that your Korean student didn't know about the American civil war. Probably most school systems of the world are weak on teaching about other cultures, and the history of other countries.
It's my bet though that she could tell you a great deal about about history and culture her native Korea.
The shocker is that, while most Americans know that there was an American civil war, most couldn't tell you who the Presidents of the Union or Confederacy were, who commanded the armies of each side, or the issues that triggered the war.
Even more shocking, most American students couldn't tell you the first thing about the American revolution or the founding fathers of this nation.
In todays schools, all history began in the 1060s with the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and John Kennedy. Anything prior to that isn't worth teaching, and when it is taught, it is laced with so much ideology that it becomes worthless knowledge.
It would be nice if American students knew something about other cultures and civilizations, but it would be nicer if they knew something about theie own.
rational: Thanks for your response. Much of what you wrote is true. In fact, it's been my experience that even the American students I teach who have had AP history courses in high school don't know all that much. Oh, they certainly know who Harriet Tubman was, but exactly who commanded the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862-1865 will stump most of them. In short, they've been fed a politically correct (and thus very narrow) view of the American past. I blame the Left entirely for this. Conservatism had nothing to do with this nonsense.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a more inclusive history of America. But not at the expense of traditional history. The damn liberals have replaced an admittedly too sentimental picture of America with a hostile assessment of the country which goes way overboard in correcting any misconceptions of what really happened. An incomplete history has been replaced with an extremely biased, often inaccurate and unpatriotic account of the American past. It helps prove that conservatives can make ordinary mistakes but liberals make egregious ones.
Just to end this commentary, I would like to be as fair as possible. It has been my experience that the best educated students from any country on earth have been those from France. In a way, I don't really want to admit this, since the French are often too hostile to my country. But fair is fair. They tend to know the most about the world and are possessed of an educational discipline which is admirable. But even with the French, and certainly with all other European students I have taught (and I teach at a college which attracts many foreign students), there are woeful lapses of knowledge. For example, almost no student from anywhere on earth has the faintest idea of what we know about mankind, due to anthropological and archeological endeavors, before the historical record began some five thousand years ago. Also, it has been my experience that European students have a frightful ignorance of classical civilization. They have demonstrated to me over the years that they know next to nothing about ancient Greece and Rome. Well, I could go on but you get the idea. Still, there are many fine young minds out there, from America and elsewhere, and so many of them I have taught over the years have shown a decided inclination to learn as much as they can about the world. It's their educational systems which have failed them over and over again by not being rigorous enough or devoid of some silly, superficial, modern agenda. And that's a shame. My best to you and yours.
Wellington,
Excellent summation. I agree with every word.
And I agree about the French also. They not only have the best educational system in the West, they also have a facinating history.
I love America. I have just returned from a visit and I can (tongue in cheek) say that America has it all, to live and travel this great country is the envy of the world and there is really no need to see the filth of the third world to get an idea of how bad it really is.
Omar Sharif should have told us how many Egyotians have passports. And perhaps he should have mentioned that 97% of Egyptian women have undergone genital mutilation. And finally he could have told us about the scientific achievements of Egypt since the Muhammedan conquest.
Perhaps he will, one day...?