In her video accepting the visionary award of YouTube (November 2008), Queen Rania spoofed David Letterman with 10 reasons of why she launched her channel against stereotypes on YouTube, 9 of those reasons are funny ones and one of the 9 is: “Because I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player…”.
Three weeks in USA, I always make my way down to the lobby from the 18th floor. In that long journey everyday I meet new people, being in a hotel will tell them that I’m at least from another state if not from another country; that what makes the question: “Where are you from?” something that I used to hear all day long.
Honestly, very few people who knew Jordan; a lot of them used to ask “Where is Jordan?” or “is it next to Israel?” but it was very shocking when someone asked me “What’s Jordan?”, that question made me answer in a very ironic way “Jordan is a basketball player”. Suddenly that man jumped and told me “oh sorry sorry… Jordan! Do you still speak Russian?” I was like “but we never spoke Russian, Jordan is in the Arab world… it’s not Georgia”. Couple of minutes the elevator stopped at the lobby and that man was explaining how much he’s sorry for not recognizing my country because it’s still very early and he’s unable to concentrate.
It didn’t take me too long to understand the reason behind their ignorance. It’s definitely not our media because we have a King and a Queen who are doing a great job in promoting Jordan, also our location in the middle of the conflicts should make us very popular. But what if those people grab the newspaper everyday in the morning to read some weird news? I couldn’t find anything that mentions the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in the daily newspaper in front of my room door and that was fine for me, but the fact that the main headline on the first page in the “US Today” newspaper was “Sandra Bullock’s new adopted son” drove me crazy, at that moment I though that the peace has spread all over the world, the conflict in Palestine has been resolved, Iraqi war is over and Haiti has been already rebuilt.
That’s insane! why would a country like USA that’s causing problems all over the world hide a lot of information about the people in the other side of the globe?
“That’s insane! why would a country like USA that’s causing problems all over the world hide a lot of information about the people in the other side of the globe?”
They aren’t hiding anything. There is simply a lack of interest… it doesn’t sell newspapers.
Comment by nobody — May 5, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
“That’s insane! why would a country like USA that’s causing problems all over the world hide a lot of information about the people in the other side of the globe?”
+1
Comment by news6boston.com — May 20, 2010 @ 7:46 am