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"FacebookPinterest\n\nAmazing, isn't it, how many people on TV are suddenly experts on the Middle East? How'd that happen? One day it was a normal media universe: newsreaders tossing harmless inanities at each other, cooing over video of some overgroomed terrier at the Westminster Dog Show, or warning us that residents of Wisconsin \"are bracing for another winter storm.\" (People up north must really get tired of \"bracing\"\u2014that's all they do!) And the next thing you knew, our TVs went totally Al Jazeera, with caught-off-guard networks having to report twenty-four\u2013seven on countries most Americans couldn't point out on a map\u2014again, much like Wisconsin.\n\n It was jarring, awkward, and, I'll say it, entertaining. I love watching journalists when they start acting hugely interested in stuff they never cared about, the look of half-baked consternation they give when they have to get \"up to speed\" on certain subjects, such as Arabs.\n\n But this was a pivot unlike any other. Foxy news anchorettes were suddenly saying \"Bahrain\" with a wistful Arabian hiccup between the first and second syllables, as if they'd studied abroad at some elite Wahhabite university that would never have them. Didn't they know we wanted to hang on, just a little longer, to our blissful ignorance of the entire region? Americans take deep pride in not knowing how to pronounce the names of countries. We do not like it when people shift into native exorcist tongue when saying simple words like Nicker-rog-wah. (Personally, I'm still a little fuzzy, and have heard various arguments about, how to pronounce the following: Qatar, Djibouti, Canada, Iraq.)\n\n But it was clear this story was like an entrenched despot that refuses to go away. And so the news networks did what they always do: pretended to be on top of the story. Most of the coverage consisted of important-looking Caucasians telling us how significant-feeling everything was. Foreign correspondents, a species previously more endangered than dolphins in a Japanese tuna cove, came out of hiding from their bureau-closets and declared things \"extremely volatile.\" Talking heads talked more headily. And maps! We never saw so many maps. How is it that everyone sounded so sure of themselves, so prepared with geopolitical analysis? They were like Watson the talking Jeopardy! computer, buzzing in with their know-it-all answers. (Reader, if you ever need proof that it is right to fear and loathe nerds, go back and watch the footage of Watson crushing his competitors with robotic disdain. That guy is a total dick!)\n\n Eventually, it became fun to Know Your Middle East. On CNN, that handsome young black anchorman who looks like he would never get his hands dirty with newsprint acted completely starstruck when talking to a real-life foreign correspondent. The guy was an Aussie, as they often are, and pointed at maps with a worldliness that said \"I know from Shiite!\" Gosh, said the anchorman, you're a foreign correspondent. And these countries are all so different. Where of all the places, of all these countries, would you most want to...go?\n\n There was something touching and naive about that guy's question, as if it were all just an \"exciting\" news story\u2014oh, gosh, I wish I could get out of this anchor seat, travel the world, and get my head punched like Anderson Cooper.\n\n But if you watched closely, you could see the discomfort on the correspondent's face. (This is serious shit! You mean, like where do I want to go? On vacation?)\n\n And just maybe, you could see a little more: a slowly creeping awareness that that kind of na\u00EFvet\u00E9 doesn't cut it anymore. We're all experts now."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/jim-nelson-april-2011>