Hijabs, NPR, and a suggestion for Judy Woodruf

Ok, anyone that knows me or reads this blog knows that I am a liberal person in nearly every contemporary political aspect; however, I'm going to run the risk of sounding a bit like a redneck in this blog, after all, I am from Alabama.

So, I'm driving to work listening to NPR this morning when they come on with a feature cultural piece covering a couple of young (16-21 years old?) Muslim American girls of Algerian heritage. The whole topic was how hard and courageous it is for these girls to choose to wear traditional Islamic headscarves, hijabs. Ok, so I listen for 10 minutes to what sounds like two fairly normal upper-middle class girls, who happen to be muslim, talking about fashion. The whole time this is going on the correspondent, Judy Woodruf, is trying to spin it like these two girls are really struggling with this decision - which, to anyone listening, they clearly were not - if there was an angle for a story at all it should have been on how much these girls enjoyed going shopping for scarves, discussing various ways to tie scarves, and all things related to scarves. Really, Judy, it didn't sound like this was too much of a burden for these girls. So, they like wearing scarves - big deal! I mean, it's not like their parents, the people at the mosque, and their friends were giving them a hard time about it; to the contrary, they are encouraged to wear scarves on their heads. I mean, it is part of Islamic culture, right?

Well, as I was listening to this it occurred to me that it would be much more compelling to interview some rural southern baptist girls about the challenges they face. Look, these muslim kids are brought up without much personal choice but protestant kids are given all kinds of freedom - it's up to them to make a decision to adhere to whatever whacky rules their religion hands down because they sure as hell aren't going to be pressured or encouraged to be "good". Not to mention the cultural contradictions: church : NASCAR, piety : frat parties, etc ... I mean, these girls truly have a hard decision - not to mention that most of them don't have money so they need to "land a man" - which leads to other social pressures that their muslim counterparts aren't facing.

Anyhow, I was pondering this when I started thinking about the fact that I'm from Alabama, and if you're from Alabama or Mississippi, or Tennessee, or Georgia, or Louisiana, or anywhere else in the south you are not even one generation removed from rural redneck land - I guarantee you that some group of your contemporary family are rednecks. So, what about these guys? What about when they have to wear shirts and shoes just to get a Big Mac? Seriously, it seems to me that it might be harder for some of these goons to put on a shirt and shoes to go in a store than for a couple of young muslim fashionistas to pick out scarves. There's a suggestion, Judy - do your next cultural piece on the decline of the southern redneck and the social anxiety they suffer from having to speak proper english and wear shoes.

I don't know where I'm going with this - it's just a rant about NPR wasting my time.