I have a bone to pick with the media. I understand that the middle east is vastly different from the places most of us in the United States have grown up, but certain aspects of the culture aren’t that difficult to comprehend. Today, I’m going to go off on the use of tribal names to identify a person in an article. These are not last names, people. They do not identify a particular person in many instances.

Please take a look at the following quote reprinted without permission from msnbc.com.  This was an Associated Press article, but I would hope nobody would really want to be associated with correspondents this  ignorant.

“'What am I doing here?'
During his visit, Amin said he met Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, who allegedly ordered the use of chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s; Saddam’s half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, a former intelligence chief who was Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva until 1998; and Saddam’s personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti.

Amin said he was approached by al-Tikriti, who was standing next to Ali Hassan al-Majid.”

Those two paragraphs are reprinted in order. You tell me who the fuck the writer is talking about, because I can’t seem to get it from the way the paragraphs are written. The article is primarily in regards to Saddam Hussein (who incidentally is also an “al-Tikriti”) and the visit to his prison made by Bakhtiar Amin, the human rights minister in Iraq. I highly doubt the human rights minister just called the guy “al-Tikriti” and left nothing else to go on.

It was commonly published before the war that many of Saddam’s high ranking government officials were from his tribe in Tikrit, so this should not be a surprise to the same media organizations that were covering the build up to war in Iraq. In fact, my unscientific count shows that 19 of the Iraqi 52 most wanted were listed as “al-Tikriti,” which leads me to believe that I should not be able to identify the individual who approached Bakhtiar Amin. Some of the people on the list show two tribal names, really adding to the confusion.

Let’s say this writer had never heard of a tribal name. How often do you suppose an Associated Press correspondent handling events in Iraq has written about places like the town of Tikrit? Failing that, do you think that maybe there should be an editor reading this and trying to figure out what is going on? I understand the demand for news in real time, but proof reading is still necessary.

For those of you who think I’m going off on the media because one ignoramus can’t seem to figure out the basics of Iraqi culture, do a little reading. I went with the article that was most recent and easiest to quote, but my exhaustive research totaling literally a dozen or so minutes and a whopping handful of articles turned up several instances of this particular offense. In addition, the statement is made nightly on national news stations. That statement is that we are indeed “Stupid Americans” having no respect for foreign cultures and people. That statement shows that many of us are ill-equipped to handle a global society and a global economy.