Background Leb Olympic skiier Jackie Chamoun appeared on a (mildly) risque Austrian calendar three years ago. Seems her bewbs were displayed in some of them, both butt cheeks in at least one. (I only looked for Rantburg, of course. I've got washing my eyes out with soap on my to-do list.) The professionally devout have been having a hissy fit.[STATEOFMIND13] In certain ways, Faysal Karami is an interesting man. He's the minister of sports and youth in our defunct government. He's a parliament member representing the city of Tripoli. He's also offended by the possible impact of Jackie Chamoun's breasts on the reputation of his country and has asked the Olympic committee to launch an investigation into the incident, which has taken place about three years prior to current events.
I'm not too sure about which "reputation" he's referring to. Lebanese women can be pretty snappy, which I guess is a reputation. The country itself is incapable of forming a government, in thrall to Syrians and Persians and such, has its own loose cannon parallel government, and isn't regarded as particularly corruption-free. All of those are "reputations" beside which Ms. Chamouns bosom pales.
Can Mr. Karami be outraged? Well, it's his right I give him that. But Mr. Karami, don't you have other things that require you to be infinitely more outraged about?
"Surely you could find something?"
Lebanon's sports have always been our pride and joy. We're a small country with not much to give the world in many of the sectors that count but we did deliver, to the best of our financial capacities, in sports. But let's forget about sports, of which Mr. Karami is technically in charge. Let's not talk about how we've always had a little basketball team that was quite good and which is not allowed to play on an international scale for a while because he let the basketball league get so upheld in politics that it felt like parliament was in session every time two teams met for a game. Let's not talk about how our football team, which beat South Korea, ended up in a mess of scandals that left us out of a World Cup dream.
Karami is a Sunni dynastic politician, head of the "Arab Liberation Party," which didn't manage to win any seats at all in the last election. He ran as "unaffiliated." He is a part of the March 8th alliance run by Hezbollah.
Let's talk instead about Tripoli, Mr. Karami's hometown. Has Mr. Karami been offended by the notion that his hometown is being viewed by a lot of Lebanese as a hub for terrorism, a second iteration of Kandahar? Is he affected by the notion that the city of which he is partially in charge is next to dead on every conceivable scale? Is he affected by the idea that the streets he called home have become infested with bearded men whose only purpose in life is to wreck havoc to the people of a city who only want to live? Is Mr. Karami aware that today's Tripoli is also his fault?
[Sniff!] "Certainly not! It's Zionists! Everybody knows that!"
Tripoli is a place I used to visit frequently. In all of the times I spent there, stray bullets and sporadic explosions included, I've never heard of Faysal Karami getting upset about the reputation of his hometown and how he got his hometown to end up is reflecting on the precious country whose reputation he holds dear.
My personal opinion is that being photographed while pretending to ski near nekkid is a pretty silly thing to do. She probably caught cold, so I hope they paid her a lot of money. Getting all fired up about it and pretending to worry about the shambles that is Leb's "reputation" is even sillier and I hope Karami catches cold sores.
A few years down the road, Faisal Karame's legacy will be that of a man who was more offended by a pair of tits than by the suicidal beards overflowing his town. He'll be known as the man who got an entire country to basically strip its clothes off to defend a woman. Isn't that quite the achievement of a lifetime?
Only a relatively small number of people outside Leb had ever heard of Ms. Chamoun until the fuss began. Now she's a world-wide issue. But at least people around the world know how devout Mr. Karami is.
Cyril Raidy started a trend on Twitter yesterday which he called #StripForJackie. Soon enough, people of all forms and genders were bracing the harshness of social media platforms, full of guts, stripping their bodies for everyone to see in order to make a point. Some were enthusiastic about it. Others were not. Some were accepting everyone who had the courage to show themselves while others immediately became a form of body police, missing the point entirely.
Review Austrian Ski calendars carefully before ordering.