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[RC] Hidalgo Movie--was Reading Recommendations - Linda B. Merims

Angie McGhee (rides2far@xxxxxxxx) said with an evil grin:
 
>I'll bet Osama's gonna be ticked off that we claimed we kicked
>their butts in a race they never had.  On the other hand...maybe
>the sheiks will fall for it and we can sell them some $25,000
>pinto mustangs. >eg<

Two comments:
 
1.  This is really why CuChullaine O'Reilly of the Long Riders'
Guild became so fanatical about destroying Hopkins' story
after Tom Sites contacted him about Disney making a movie
about Hopkins this past spring after it came up on Ridecamp.
Did he know anything about this famous 19th century distance
rider?  Sites asked him.  And it just so happened that Sites contacted
him during the build-up to the current Iraqi war.
 
O'Reilly is an American of Irish descent ("CuChullaine" is
just a Gaelic transliteration of "Cullen").  I think he is as
fascinating a character, at least, as Hopkins.  He became
a Mujahaddin in Afghanistan during the Afghan--Soviet
war in the 1980's.  At that time, the Mujahaddin were viewed
as the "good guys"--the resistance fighting the Soviets with the
support of the US, the CIA, Usama bin Ladin, the Saudi's, and
who-all.  O'Reilly converted to Islam and is now a devout Moslem.
 
He was personally and deeply offended that a bald-faced-
lying-no-good-son-of-a-bitch like Hopkins should be crowing about
beating native Arabs on their own sand and how good 'ole American Mustangs
are really better than those forrin' Ay-Raab horses any-old-day,
when O'Reilly knew the story was a complete lie.
 
It was even worse that Disney should be making a movie that will
have international release that repeats, and even amplifies and romanticizes
this lie.  For example, the script calls for an Arab to slay his own
horse and commit suicide in shame for losing.  Arabs don't
kill their horses over this kind of nonsense, and suicide is
as much a sin in Islam as it is in Christianity.  (The scriptwriter
seems to have gotten Arabs confused with Samurai.)
 
So, he set out to publically destroy the myth in order to defend the
honor of Islam as much or more than to expose Hopkins
as a "fake" as a Long Rider.
 
I think he has succeeded spectacularly.
 
 
2.  The Arabs won't be fooled a second.  They know the truth of
this.
 
My personal opinion is that the US is going to come out looking
like an idiot in all this.  It is going to be downright embarassing.
It is the classic example of the "Ugly American."  We are going
to come out looking like the same kind of blow-hard, phoney-baloney
liars as Hopkins is.
 
My bet is that, once the Disney movie is released, it is going
to be front-page news in the Middle East, and there are going to
be lots of stories that explain how easily all these silly Americans
and Disney swallowed Hopkins' drivel for decades for no other
reason than it appealed so perfectly to their unquestioned sense of
their own superiority.
 
And how it took a converted American Moslem Mujahaddin to
set the story straight.
 
My bet is that O'Reilly becomes a minor hero/celebrity in the Moslem
world, and there'll be lots of interviews with him on Al-Jaziira.
 
 
Well, you can't say this hasn't all been interesting--an absolute
feast if your taste runs to irony.
 
Linda B. Merims
Massachusetts, USA