Oh Michelle O.

[rubato]

She touched YOUR raw nerve and YOU twitched.


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

I don't often say "you're a flaming stupid arsehole" but in this case

You're a flaming stupid arsehole, rubato

[Econoline]

At least they aregetting educated. There are a few Muslim enclaves/sects where that is forbidden.

That would be a pretty good answer to the question posed in the OP, IMHO. (I also note that, if you look at the photos that accompany the article, the school does not require the hijab--that's presumably a decision left to each family or each individual girl--and possibly might not even allow the niqab or other more-restrictive coverings common in conservative Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia.)

As for this...

Oh I'm sure it was at the author, Econo. But thanks.

You're welcome...but I see it's time for me go go back to being a pessimist. ("The great thing about being a pessimist is that you're always either being proven correct or being pleasantly surprised.")

[Lord Jim]

If you, Gob, Maj Genl, the author &c were not racists and religious bigots you would not have seen this choice of a school to visit as at all interesting.


It is your racism and your bigotry towards Muslims which identifies this choice as deserving of criticism.


You reveal yourselves so clearly and so obviously for what you are.


The only way for you to understand it is to admit your own racism. And no amount of re-writing will ever do that.


yrs,
rubato

By process of elimination, I assume I must be the "you" referenced in the first sentence of that vile, sputtering nonsense...

Actually rube, if you look at the posts, I hadn't commented at all on Michelle's school visit...

Merely on the hilarious absurdity of someone with your extensive record for religious bigotry accusing others of it...

(That's what touched my "raw nerve"... or to be more accurate, my funny bone....)

I'm not much given to quoting scripture, but one passage (well, two actually) would definitely seem to apply here:

Matthew 7:3:

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"


Matthew 7:5 :

"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

[Gob]

If you, Gob, Maj Genl, the author &c were not racists and religious bigots you would not have seen this choice of a school to visit as at all interesting.


It is your racism and your bigotry towards Muslims which identifies this choice as deserving of criticism.


You reveal yourselves so clearly and so obviously for what you are.


The only way for you to understand it is to admit your own racism. And no amount of re-writing will ever do that.


yrs,
rubato

Interesting, he still hasn't got a clue what the OP indicated, has he? Aspergers is a terrible condition, we should feel sorry for him really. But there again, it's quite possible to have Aspergers and still be an utter arsehole as well.

[Scooter]

You don't need to go further than the first few lines to recognize the dishonest premise upon which the entire article hangs, . He wanted to criticize Mrs. Obama for visiting a Muslim school, and engage in a lot of gratuitous Muslim bashing in the process, but he needed to invent a justification for that, so he posits a "guess", pulled completely out of thin air, that the school was chosen to "celebrate diversity", and then uses this entirely imaginary reason for the visit to go into a diatribe about why the school does not fit the bill.

And I echo others who are disgusted by the way he writes off an entire generation of British Muslim girls by saying in so many words that they are incapable of gleaning any benefit from Obama's visit.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Looks like someone else has asspurgers

[Gob]

Did the First Lady not appreciate the contradictions inherent in delivering a speech on female emancipation and education in front of an audience which could have been transported direct from Saudi Arabia?

Before the usual, excitable suspects start bouncing up and down, hurling their predictable knee-jerk smears of ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’, let me emphasise that this isn’t a criticism of the girls themselves or the Mulberry School, which is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

The pupils have no option other than to wear the restrictive clothes imposed upon them by their parents and their religious leaders.

It was bizarre, to say the least, to watch the wife of the President of the United States preaching equality to a single-sex audience dressed from head to toe in what most of us would consider to be a symbol of separatism, female oppression and a rejection of Western democratic values.

While we’re at it, what was she doing there in the first place? Surely her remarks would have been more appropriate in Riyadh or some other outpost of fundamentalist Islam. And it’s not as if America has an exemplary record of educational equality, especially in the inner cities.

[Scooter]

And I'll repeat what others have said - who better to have that message preached to them than those who need it the most?

[Gob]

So why did Michelle Obama choose Tower Hamlets, and the Mulberry School for Girls?

She said she specifically chose the area, and asked the question aloud herself, during her speech: “Why would she choose Tower Hamlets? I’m here because of you,” she told the crowd.

“When I look out at all these young women, I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,” she told the room full of hijab-wearing girls. “I know I don’t look [older than you all]”, she crowed. And then went on to praise the local area, which is known for being a hot bed of Islamist activity and sympathy.

She described Tower Hamlets as a place where “families are tight knit… with strong values”. Perhaps this is true. There has certainly been evidence of a very “tightly knit” cabal attempting to rule Tower Hamlets. And there are certainly strong values too. Almost half of Britain’s 1300 cases of Female Genital Mutilation last year were from London. No prizes for guess which areas these emanate from.

So perhaps Mrs. Obama’s message about “climate change, poverty, extremism” were not best placed in the London borough best known for being a hive of corruption itself. Then again, as she chose to remind us, she is from the mean streets of Chicago. So that rotten stench probably rings quite familiar.

[Scooter]

So the author of the original piece lied when he claimed that the school was chosen for Obama's visit in order to "celebrate diversity".

[Gob]

My guess is that the venue was chosen deliberately by the Department for Education to showcase our new, rigorously enforced State religion: ‘Celebrating Diversity’.

So every time you make a guess, you tell a lie? Daft.

[Scooter]

When you make a "guess", and then you use it to frame the entirety of your argument, you intend it to be taken as much more than a guess.

loCAtek used to frame her lies and accusations in the form of a question in the belief that it somehow absolved her of responsibility for what she was saying. No difference here.

[Gob]

I'm betting his "guess" echoes a fair bit of truth.

I cannot hand on heart believe Michelle O, picked this school at random from the London schools directory. I believe it was a political, and politically correct, decision.

To choose a mono-cultural school instead of one of the ethnically, and multi-culturally schools available, one which in no way represents the country and city she is visiting, smacks of manipulation.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Y'all are missing the point. The writer didn't suggest that MO picked the school. He opined that the UK education dept picked the location.

What is this - rocket scient?

[Scooter]

Of course it wasn't random, Obama says as much.

That doesn't mean that it was picked to "celebrate diversity", which is the entire basis on which the author attacks her decision to visit it. i.e. she was supposed to be "celebrating diversity" and look, she picked a monocultural school. It was a contradiction entirely of the writer's own invention, created from the dishonest premise on which the entire piece hangs.

If you actually look at what she did and said, without the writer's need to spin it as some exercise in licking the ass of the mullahs, first start with how she dressed. Practically sleeveless, short hem, abandoning her typically solid colours for a bold print - her outfit alone was intended to make a statement among all those headscarves. Then she gives a speech about not letting the environment in which you grow up get in the way of reaching your dreams, about looking out at the audience and seeing surgeons and lawyers and women who will inspire the world, and perhaps the person who will discover the cure for cancer. Doesn't sound like the sort of thing that those practising female genital mutilation would want their daughters to hear.

But then of course, this particular school doesn't exactly fit the mould of a madrassa that the author in the OP wishes to portray it. Because it is a high academic achieving school where 80% of the students go on to university. Doesn't sound like the path that religious extremists would want their submissive daughters to follow.

[Gob]

Y'all are missing the point. The writer didn't suggest that MO picked the school. He opined that the UK education dept picked the location.

What is this - rocket scient?

Hello? Do you think MO decided without consulting the UK education dept?

[MajGenl.Meade]

No I don't and I just said that. What's the 'hello' for'?

My guess is that the venue was chosen deliberately by the Department for Education to showcase our new, rigorously enforced State religion: ‘Celebrating Diversity’

I'm just commenting on all the twats above who think the author stated that MO chose the school.

[Gob]

Ah, soz, my bad....

[dgs49]

(1) Is the school funded with UK tax dollars, or is it what we in the U.S. would refer to as a "parochial," privately funded school?

If it is UK tax dollars, why?

(2) What does "diversity" mean, in context? That students are exposed in school to other races, cultures, etc? Or that the overall education system sponsors cultures that are different from the predominant culture? If the latter, this is the opposite of diversity: educating students in a monochromatic environment so that they will not have to bothered by others who are different from them.

(3) Would M.O. speak at a RC, private girls high school in the U.S.? Or at a Yeshiva in NYC?