False Sense of Maturity

The gist is all you really need of this article, but click through to read more…

At least 10,000 — some who had waited for hours — cheered when Sen. Barack Obama appeared before supporters at a “Change We Need” rally at Metropolitan Park Saturday afternoon. Up to 8,000 others were turned away after police said the park reached capacity 30 minutes before the program began. The Democratic presidential nominee took the stage just over an hour later, saying, “What an unbelievable crowd.”

I guess Saudi Arabians have very diverse tastes in TV. Evidently, they have shows that do more than depict Jews as monkey-men; they also have Oprah (read the post below to see what I mean):

When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.

In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.