Journalist Sam Husseini was suspended from the National Press Club this week over the exchange above with Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal al-Sa’ud. The transcript his here, and here is an excerpt with al-Saud responding to Hussieni's question "What legitimacy does you regime have?":
Turki: I advise anybody who has these questions to come to the kingdom and see for themselves. I don't need to justify my country's legitimacy. We're participants in all of the international organizations and we contribute to the welfare of people through aid program not just directly from Saudi Arabia but through all the international agencies that are working throughout the world to provide help and support for people. We admit this, as I said that we have many challenges inside our country and those challenges we are hoping to address and be reformed by evolution, as I said, and not by revolution. So that is the way that we are leading, by admitting that we have shortcomings. Not only do we recognize the shortcomings, but hopefully put in place actions and programs that would overcome these shortcomings. I have mentioned the fact that when you call Saudi Arabia a misogynistic country that women in Saudi Arabia can now not only vote, but also participate as candidates in elections and be members of the Shura Council. And I just refer you to your own experience to your women's rights, when did your women get right to vote? After how many years since the establishment of the United States did women get to vote in the United States? Does that mean that before they got the vote that United States was an illegitimate country? According to his definition, obviously. So, until, when was it -- 1910 when women got to vote -- from 1789 to 1910 United States was illegitimate? This is how you should measure things, by how people recognize their faults and try to overcome them.
Husseini: -- So are you saying that Arabs are inherently backward? --
Politico has the Press Club's statement here, and Husseini discusses the National Press Club's action on his blog:
I should note that there have been tensions at the Press Club before, some with me, some with other journalists. See "Banned from First Amendment Room." Several years ago, [National Press Club Executive Director Bill McCarren] and I were in the elevator together at the Press Building and he told me that I was causing him a great deal of grief because of my questioning of officials. He said that there were a lot of other places in Washington, D.C. -- think tanks and such -- that host officials without the officials having to deal with such questioning. I told him I understood his point, and even sympathized to a degree. I wasn't trying to drive officials away, but that this was the National Press Club, that it should be known for its independence and not be a place where officials would come because they expected to avoid serious scrutiny. I said I thought that events at the Press Club would carry more weight and be more interesting the more critical the questioning was -- and that events that were simply flacking for an official were hollow and less deserving of thoughtful attention. I walked away feeling like we had understood each other better.
Another issue is that tough questioning seems to be done selectively, and of course this is an issue not just at the National Press Club. When individuals who seem at odds with the establishment, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Jeremiah Wright have spoken before to the Press Club, they were very critically questioned. Others, however, are treated rather reverentially. I have participated, and at times benefited from some of this. When the Austrian Neo-Nazi Jörg Haider came to the Club, Hickman, the same moderator at the Turki event, allowed me to give him quite a grilling with several followups -- at least four or five, much to my joy -- and congratulated me for my efforts afterwords. During the beginning of Turki's reply to my question, McCarren continued speaking to me, he had walked right up to me and spoke in a rather obnoxious tone, telling me to let Turki answer the question. I told McCarren that I was simply responding to Turki's question to me. McCarren continued speaking in an obnoxious manner to me and I said to him "are you threatening me?" He responded: "Absolutely." We had an exchange after I left the news conference as well. After the event, I sent an email to Hickman asking if he knew where I could get video of the news conference and he replied cordially but could not help provide the video, which I was finally able to obtain after several days.
Later that afternoon, I got an email with the notice of suspension signed by McCarren. The letter states: "We are suspending your membership for two weeks, effective immediately, due to your conduct at a news conference held at the National Press Club on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. Your action was in direct violation of House Rule 4 and grounds for immediate suspension.
"House Rule No. 4 states: 'Boisterous and unseemly conduct or language in or about the Club premises or in connection with any Club-sponsored event is prohibited. Any member so offending shall be liable for immediate suspension by any Member of the board or the manager or his designee pending investigation by the board, which shall render final action.'
"This matter will be review ed by the Club’s Ethics Committee. A meeting will be scheduled prior to the end of your two week suspension to discuss your conduct and the violation. The Chairperson of the Ethics Committee will contact you to schedule the meeting.
"In the meantime, you should not come to the Club or use its facilities for any reason."
The charge is false. I did not engage in "boisterous and unseemly conduct or language" -- I engaged in tough journalism with a powerful government official from an autocratic regime that is allied with the U.S. government. This apparently warrants suspension from the National Press Club in Executive Director McCarren's view.
This was not a university with kids trying to shout down a speaker; this was a press club which had invited the speaker and granted memberships to the members. The reporter was rather OUTRE.
“Mr. ambassador, some critics of the Kingdom say * * *; how do you respond?” and BTW, the ambassaror did already say that there would be (slow) evolution, not revolution, so what did the reporter mean by asking if (in the ambassador’s opinion) Arabs were backward? Asked and answered.
Yea…..
“Husseini: — So are you saying that Arabs are inherently backward? –”
That was just a stupid insult….no other way to take it.
I would have suspended him too.
“I would have suspended him too.”
Well, then, you’ve got the press corps you should be happy with, where monarchs allied with the US are treated with deference and people who get a little snarky are banned for their presumption. The prince responded to a question about the legitimacy of the Saudi regime by trying to turn it into a question about the legitimacy of the country.
In fact he blew his reporting on this interview just because he wanted to be
‘snarky’ and insulting..maybe he though it was ‘brave’ and cute. It wasn’t.
As much as I appreciate seeing poobabs grilled on Israel if he had said the same to an Israel official….”well does that mean Jews are backwards”…I would still see it the same way. It was childish and stupid.
So if Obama was talking aboutb the black community and saying enough improvements or advancements haven’t been made fast enough and the guy said to Obama ..’so are you saying that blacks are backwards”.
Need I go on.
This was a reporter of Arab background (judging from his name) grilling a member of an Arab monarchy making excuses for his regime on the grounds that he thinks his own country is too backwards for democracy. Consequently it needs the wise guidance of people like himself, democracy be damned. He doesn’t put it in those terms, but that’s clearly what he means. (As I pointed out before, he also pulls the classic sleazy trick of pretending that a criticism of the regime is a criticism of the country living under the regime.) Husseini calls him on it. The press organization boots Husseini. Even if one disapproves of the snark, it was a wild overreaction. But the snark was deserved.
I gotta agree with Pab and American here….inferring the regime is illegitimate can be done without insulting arabs in general…..
Right. Exactly what I am saying.
Again, you’re going to have to explain how Arabs are being insulted here. It is obviously not Sam Husseini’s goal to insult Arabs. It is his goal to insult the Saudi regime, a totalitarian regime that is celebrating the fact that women have the right to drive and vote, rights that have long been the norm virtually everywhere else. So by criticizing Sam, you’re not standing up for Arabs, you’re standing up for the Saudi regime.
It’s rare that I agree with hophmi, but he’s obviously correct. The prince is claiming that his government, a dictatorship, should be applauded because it is carefully steering the people of Saudi Arabia in the right direction. This is the self-serving view that Husseini is attacking when he says “So the Arabs are inherently backwards.” It’s called sarcasm.
Based on historical and political context, I offer you the following Translation:
Reporter: “What legitimacy does your regime have?”
Prince: “Don’t embarrass me in front of these gullible Americans. Saudi Arabia is a flourishing democracy, the ONLY democracy in the Middle East. We’re not perfect, we have a ways to go, but we’re working on it. There, I dodged the question. In your face!”
Reporter: “Who do you think you’re bull&@#^$ with your nonsense?”
Answer: “I never liked the watchdogs of democracy. That’s why my family and I have been ruling Saudi Arabia with an iron fist for generations, after being supported by the British empire, of course. Legitimacy? I got your legitimacy right here. You’re suspended, you little &@#^$”.
As an aside, in all likelihood, the Saudi prince himself exerted pressure and perhaps even demanded that journalist be suspended. In addition, if the journalist were an anglo-saxon by the name of Andrew Wilkinson, the Saudi prince wouldn’t have demanded his suspension.
When the price of Saudi oil goes through the roof, we’ll now know who’s to blame…
“Another issue is that tough questioning seems to be done selectively, and of course this is an issue not just at the National Press Club. When individuals who seem at odds with the establishment, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Jeremiah Wright have spoken before to the Press Club, they were very critically questioned. Others, however, are treated rather reverentially.”
That’s the governing principle of American journalism these days. Maybe it’s always been like that.
— there have been good years and bad years, good decades and shameful ones. He may have violated the club’s bylaws, but they are obviously enforced quite selectively.
Most of you seem to agree that it was OK to suspend a journalist from the National Press Club for asking completely legitimate but tough questions of a Prince from a totalitarian state. If, when asked whether his regime is legitimate he answered in true Borat fashion that women in Saudi Arabia now can drive, he deserved to be asked whether he thought Arabs were backward.
Uh…. “Borat” isn’t real. That’s actually a British guy making fun of Eastern Europeans and/or Western Asians.
Just in case you didn’t realize that, you have a bad track record for not being able to tell this sort of thing from actual facts.
ROTFLMAO. Another Mondowhackjob without a sense of humor. “In Saudi Arabia, women can now drive. Also, we no longer castrate the homosexuals.”
For a change, Hophmi is right on that one; Husseini has a solid track record of being pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian; Google his name. He was being sarcastic to the prince, which is not nice to begin with, but the prince didn’t spare him either; he dragged him back 222 years into American history to make a point, and Husseini threw it back in his face with his nasty question.
Her’s more on Husseini’s concern from a couple of days back:
Saudi women with attractive eyes may be forced to cover them
Nov 20, 2011 at 01:01
London, Nov 19 (IANS) Saudi women with attractive eyes may be forced to cover them up under a new law in the country.
The ultra-conservative Islamic state has said it has the right to stop women revealing ‘tempting’ eyes in public.
A proposal to enshrine the measure in law has been tabled, Daily Mail reported Saturday quoting Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, spokesperson for Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Women in Saudi Arabia already have to wear a long black cloak, called an abaya, cover their hair and, in some regions, conceal their faces while in public.
If they do not, they face punishments including fines and public floggings.
The proposal was made after a member of the committee was attracted by a woman’s eyes as he walked along a street, provoking a fight, one report on the Bikya Masr news website suggested.
The woman was walking with her husband who ended up being stabbed twice in the hand after the altercation.
The virtue and vice committee has repeatedly been accused of human rights violations. Founded in 1940, its function is to ensure that Islamic laws are not broken in public in Saudi Arabia.
In 2002, the committee refused to allow female students out of a burning school in the holy city of Mecca because they were not wearing correct head cover. The decision is thought to have contributed to the high death toll of 15.
They are also banned from driving by religious edict and cannot travel without authorisation from their male guardians.
link to en.news.maktoob.com
I wouldn’t say most commenters here agree with that, hophmi.
With what?
“With what?”
I think he means that most of us aren’t defenders of the Saudi government. Even the people upthread who are attacking Husseini aren’t defending the Saudi government. They are utterly misreading Husseini’s comment, I think. That’s frustrating enough, but it may not be anything worse than that.
“Another issue is that tough questioning seems to be done selectively, and of course this is an issue not just at the National Press Club.”
I used to listen to the National Press Club all of the time. Seldom are hardball questions asked of any of the speakers.