http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/69345The Michelle Obama Valerie Jarrett Publicity Hound Tag Team
Author
By Judi McLeod January 28, 2015
Are first lady Michelle Obama and her mentor Valerie Jarrett, who is her husband’s senior advisor, complicit in a publicity stunt making it appear that they champion women’s rights?
While Michelle Obama seized the spotlight by not wearing a head scarf when meeting with Saudi officials in Riyadh yesterday, Jarrett was sending out this message on Twitter: “Every girl’s life matters. Every woman should be able to go about her day and be safe and treated with respect.”
The tell-tale timing of this tag team’s publicity stunt was obvious to everyone but the mainstream media.
The Associated Press credited Mrs. Obama for illustrating “the stark limitations under which Saudi women live’”.
All for just standing there with no headscarf?
The cheers from women’s rights groups must be on the way.
“For first lady Michelle Obama, just a few hours in Saudi Arabia were enough to illustrate the stark limitations under which Saudi women live. (Yahoo News, Jan. 27, 2015)
“Joining President Barack Obama for a condolence visit after the death of King Abdullah, Mrs. Obama stepped off of Air Force One wearing long pants and a long, brightly colored jacket — but no headscarf.
“Under the kingdom’s strict dress code for women, Saudi females are required to wear a headscarf and loose, black robes in public. Most women in Saudi Arabia cover their hair and face with a veil known as the niqab. But covering one’s head is not required for foreigners, and some Western women choose to forego the headscarf while in Saudi Arabia.
“As a delegation of dozens of Saudi officials — all men — greeted the Obamas in Riyadh, some shook hands with Mrs. Obama. Others avoided a handshake but acknowledged the first lady with a nod as they passed by.”
Michelle may have suffered only a passing nod from Saudi officials, but Jarrett was slammed within minutes of her “Every girl’s life matters” tweet.
“Go about her day”—Said while your boss is paying respects to a country where women can’t even drive, one responder tweeted.
“Even those 20 week old unborn little girls?”, tweeted another.
“Saudi Arabia imposes many restrictions on women on the strict interpretation of Islamic Shariah (shah-REE’-yuh) law known as Wahhabism. Genders are strictly segregated. Women are banned from driving, although there have been campaigns in recent years to lift that ban. Guardianship laws also require women to get permission from a male relative to travel, get married, enroll in higher education or undergo certain surgical procedures.” (Yahoo News)
And that’s only an AP description of restrictions on women in present day Saudi Arabia where the Saudis continue to allow stoning to death women suspected of adultery; who punish the victims of rape rather than the rapist and allow public floggings of women.
“The use of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia (or Islamic law) and is condemned internationally because of the wide range of crimes which can result in the death penalty and because it is usually carried out by public beheading. In 2011, the Saudi government reported 26 executions in the country. Amnesty International counted a minimum of 79 in 2013. Foreigners are not exempt, accounting for “almost half” of executions in 2013. In fact, there are many foreigners (especially those from the developing world) who are routinely executed mainly for drug smuggling and murder. There has not been any report of a Western national being executed in the recent history of Saudi Arabia. (Wikipedia)
“Unlike executions in most other countries that have not abolished the death penalty, executions of offenders are not performed privately in prisons, but publicly in central Riyadh, and have been called the “only form of public entertainment” in Saudi Arabia “apart from football matches”. It is one of the last four countries to still carry out public executions and the only country to carry them on regularly.”
It’s an injustice beyond measure for any mainstream media to give credit for “illustrating” the stark limitations under which Saudi women live by someone merely standing there in photographs.
Given the barbaric treatment suffered by women in Saudi Arabia, illustration and Tweets will NEVER be enough.
Under present day circumstances, taking to Twitter to milk as much publicity as possible for your bosses who are off on a ‘condolence’ junket is hypocrisy at its most crass.
Every girl’s life matters to Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett only so long as those lives can be exploited for publicity.
