NASESA

posted at 3:20 pm on July 11, 2010 by Steven Den Beste

Seems as if they’re about to rename a once-well-reknowned American organization to NASESA, the National Arabic Self Esteem and Space Administration.

The idea that NASA’s primary function now should be to reach out to Arab nations and to try to help them feel good about themselves by talking about Arabic achievements from 500 years ago approaches the ludicrous — but that, reportedly, is what Obama told the current head of the agency.

As has been noted, the MSM is almost totally silent on this story. It’ll be interesting to see if the alternate media can get it past the self-appointed doorkeepers and into the public’s view.

But there’s a different aspect of this story that I find interesting. Way back in 2002, there was considerable argument about what might be the “root cause” of the 9/11 attack. The leftist point of view was that it was ultimately our own fault, caused by decades, if not centuries, of misdeeds. To end the war, we needed to ask ourselves why they hated us. And then we needed to don sackcloth and ashes, and give all our wealth to the poor around the world.

Some of us on the other side of the fence proposed the idea that the root cause was Arab shame at Arab failure and incompetence. To which the response from the left was a collective gasp at how we could be so insensitive and bigoted.

Now, it seems, our very leftist president thinks that the Arabs suffer from a self esteem problem — just as I and others like me said, back in 2002.

To a multiculturalist, among the very worst of sins is to judge another culture and to conclude that it is crummy. And now, our very own multicultural First Citizen of the World has said exactly that about the Arabs. Could that be the reason the MSM is ignoring this story?

UPDATE 20100712: The White House has changed its mind. Arab outreach isn’t NASA’s job after all.

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