Sand and Fog

We've let a little time pass since our last comment on Andrew Sullivan's material -- it's a well covered beat and there's been less to argue with recently as Sully inserts himself at the vanguard of the torture memo backlash. But that hasn't stopped him from skulking around some of the seedier corners of the Web. Amidst his indignation about Alberto Gonzales' upward mobility, we get this:

FOIE GRAS AND ARAB WOMEN: An insight into how many Arab men appreciate rotund women and are force-feeding them into obesity ... [excerpt] ... Kudos for Daniel Pipes and the WSJ for bringing attention to this problem. Where, one wonders, are Western feminists?

Classic closing sentences -- the sourcing to Araba-phobe Daniel Pipes and the indictment of "western feminists" as co-conspirators in the practice. Sullywatch provides the necessary analysis, and asks:

Since we can’t go look at the Journal story [that Pipes used as a source] online without a subscription, there’s no way to tell how selective the quote chosen [by Pipes and Sully] is or isn’t.

Given the vast wealth generated by our own blogging, we have maintained an online subscription to the Journal and can report that although the quote is a fair reflection of the story, the story itself is being scaled up by Pipes and Sully to be something it isn't. It's a mixture of specific anecdotes from Mauritania, and general statistics on obesity from throughout the Arab world.

Pipes and Sully want you to think of the Arab world as being full of Sir Mixalots with camels, as if Nouakchott and Dubai were just a hop, skip, and jump from each other. Yet we know from around the world that obesity and nutrition can worsen even as wealth increases -- China for instance. So why, one wonders, the seizing of a culturally specific explanation in this case?