Not Without My(space) Daughter

In all of my job searching I guess I should look into working for MySpace. With all of the child predators and the like, I think they probably need a lot of PR work.

From Yahoo:
"A 16-year-old honor student from Michigan tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew off to the Mideast to be with a West Bank man she met on MySpace.com, authorities say."

Here's my thought about the whole thing. I don't think this story would be getting the amount of coverage that it has if she wasn't meeting a guy from the Middle East. No one would have cared if a girl went off to meet a dude in Canada or even Italy. Why? Because we in the U.S. think that all Middle Eastern men are swarthy, hairy-chested women smugglers who are going to take our women captive, never again to return.

That made me think back to a high school education highlight from my own life. Mr. Brian Hughes coached basketball and taught driver's ed at Murray High. I remember that during our driving lessons he would have us drive him on his personal errands - to the post office, to the Subway, to his mom's house. Very classy. He also taught World Civilizations.

I attribute the fact that I know nothing about world history to Mr. Hughes' class. When we got to the section about the Middle East, we watched "Not Without My Daughter," the movie where Sally Fields gets married to an Iranian. He takes her home for a vacation and then never lets her go back to the states. She then goes to crazy lengths to escape and get back home.

It took us like three days to watch the movie. That was our entire education on the Middle East. On behalf of the hundreds of sophomores that took your class, Mr. Hughes, I would like to thank you for contributing to our cultural ignorance. And thank you, Mr. Hughes' mom for the carrot cake that you gave us the day we stopped by your house on our driver's ed route.