Everybody needs to read this article by the War Nerd right now. It’s absolutely his best.
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Clarissa's Blog 
Well War Nerd is doing the same as he accuses the original writer of doing, in that he draws way too much information from a small amount of evidence. I mean to say that Americans are very visual and seem to imagine they can see into reality and draw all sorts of meanings from it on the basis of some pictures.
Consider:
“Look at the first photo in the series, and try to see it like you would if you were living in a cold, lawless wilderness with the Taliban looking for a way to kill your whole clan. You need to have a smart, strong person in command. Who? Those male relatives standing behind her. You can see why she’s in charge: Not one of the males looks fit for command. The old guy next to her—smart, maybe, but too passive, too old. The young men—look how they hang back, stare aimlessly, watch for someone else to give the cue. They’re OK as trigger-pullers, but that’s all.”
Speculatively (because we really do not know) he could be confusing cause and effect. If I were not charged with defending my group with a weapon my eyes might start to look detached and gormless, too.
In any case, how is War Lord’s assumption that she stepped in because the men around her were not up to the task NOT sexist? He seems to assume that she may have been happier with a nice, traditional grandmotherly role if only the men could have pulled their weight.
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These are Tajiks. These are deeply patriarchal, pre-modern societies where people have nothing but their prescribed roles. Individualism has not arrived yet. It’s all about how you serve the clan and follow your role. When any variation has to enter into the role, it does cause profound misery.
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I see. So of course that ought to have been mentioned by both the original writer and War Nerd. I do not see that this point was put across well. Perhaps it was hinted at. Furthermore, one might analyse that war inconveniences everyone and causes deep misery. That’s not about the role you have to perform. let us not fall into the trap of assuming that it is more painful to deviate from one’s traditional role than it is to participate in a war. Violence trumps painful deviation–well, especially if there is no direct social penalty for the deviation.
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Are we sure that Jen Percy isn’t actually on some Mens Rights group’s payroll in order to make female war correspondants look like the stupidest idea ever?
Maybe she’s being paid by the Taliban or IS to discredit American journalism.
There’s just no way that she actually underwent any real journalism education or any of the other fields a journalist should know before entering a war zone.
Her original article reads like a parody.
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Ok, is it because she is writing everything in terms of relationships and not in terms of setting the historical, social and other contexts? I really have a sense that there are too many layers of symbolic gender hierarchies here for us to extricate ourselves from all of them. Is it that she is writing from the bottom of the hierarchical binary, as a gendered female? This might be what makes left wing Americans recoil, because of the ideology of the need to flatten the structure of gendered hierarchy? I skim read both articles, and certainly the heat in Perth may be making me a bit dense, but they seemed on a par with each other, in that (to my mind) neither Percy’s article nor that of the War Nerd managed to avoid using the lens of gender i their writing. For instance to say that the woman ought not to have been described as she was because that makes her uglier than she was (if that was what War Nerd wanted to say) shows a deep concern for maintaining the traditional category of femininity for the sake of the woman depicted in the article.
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For War Nerd her looks are mostly irrelevant but Percy has no other way of judging womens’ worth beyond their make-up, hair, weight and CV. CP’s apparent indifference to those things makes her a bizarre and incomprehensible figure or menace.
In her article Percy is a controlling mother who cannot comprehend her daughter’s lack of interest in looking as pretty as she can and assuming malovent intent. (the ages are wrong but the power differentials arent).
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Oh, really! THAT was in there!!!?/? Aha.
See I couldn’t pick up that at all. I often think Americans are tone deaf, but it is also true that I do not pick up any of their tonalities.
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My new theory: The original article is a stalking horse for a movie comedy “Me and Commander Pigeon”, I’m in a rush right now, details to follow….
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For someone so focused on relationships, the original writer has absolutely no clue how to behave. It’s a weird snub to go straight to interview questions and to refuse food in that context. As for following her out to the outhouse, the original writer has the street smarts of a simpleton (she might freeze) in this context in addition to being a suspicious person to the war lord. Everyone huddles together because heating fuel is at a premium.
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The warlord is treating her like a guest who is a sitting duck. It’s clear the writer wouldn’t last five minutes by herself in this context. Annoying or not, the warlord has to keep her alive. Poor people in villages will extend themselves for guests at great cost to themselves, offering the best parts of the meal, the best place to sleep, etc. Also in a village, the Western idea of personal space is ludicrous. You don’t have your own room, or necessarily your own bed. People will go through your stuff. My friend went to visit her relatives in the village and said she was bringing her contacts. Aren’t you bringing your glasses instead? No, she said. I think one of her relatives, a small boy, took the weekly contacts out, and placed them in his eyes. And this was a relatively prosperous peacetime village in good weather, not a war zone.
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And it’s not impossible to find these things out before you go, right? Finding information is what journalists do, so I’m sure she could have informed herself about Tajiks. Or maybe she did inform herself but just knows this is what will sell. Which is even sadder.
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I know absolutely nothing about Tajiks. But that’s not the problem.
The kicker is she’s not trained as a journalist, she’s got an MFA. MFAs in Creative Writing focus on metaphors for the endless navel gazing of frustrated middle class to upper middle class white people and have severe problems of imagination when it comes to anybody else. Could you imagine her trying to write about Ukrainians? She’s like War Correspondent Reese Witherspoon.
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“MFAs in Creative Writing focus on metaphors for the endless navel gazing of frustrated middle class to upper middle class white people and have severe problems of imagination when it comes to anybody else.”
“Could you imagine her trying to write about Ukrainians? ”
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I agree. I want to support the idea of an MFA. I understand the appeal. A bit of space and time to write; access to successful writers; access to an incredible library/research facility. And yet, without fail, MFA’s are ignorant, mean spirited, and painfully trite writers who seem to think that an MFA is on par with a PhD.
I also object to undergraduate degrees in creative writing. I have no issue with electives in creative writing but it should not be a degree. And tenure track lines in English should not be given to those with an MFA. I think PhDs should be required for university professors.
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“I also object to undergraduate degrees in creative writing. I have no issue with electives in creative writing but it should not be a degree. And tenure track lines in English should not be given to those with an MFA. I think PhDs should be required for university professors.”
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It would be great if people tried learning something about the place they are visiting. The part about the flat face and the prominent nose just slaughtered. Yes, the woman is different ethnically from you. What a shock.
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Nobody asked for it, but here’s my summary of the upcoming movie based on the article, name Commander Fox (because the name Commander Pigeon didn’t test well).
Here is the plot of the upcoming new comedy “Commander Fox” (because pigeon tested badly).
Jessica Renard (Renee Witherspoon) is a fledgling war correspondent assigned to Kabul who’s frustrated by the sexism of the existing Old Boy’s Club journalists who keep her from the real stories. Herkand (Pedro Pascal) a translator hired by Jessica’s employers. He’s impressed with the competent way she opens envelopes and tries to interest her in the story of the woman warlord Commander Fox. Jessica is skeptical.
One day while looking for the right color fingernail polish Jessica is kidnapped by rebels from the mysterious Xoresh province. She quickly gains their trust and they’re about to release her when the US forces show up and “save” her.
This makes relations in the newsroom worse. Her male boss keeps yammering about the four soldiers who died in the rescue operation and she’s had enough of his chauvinistic condescension. Even worse, her longtime correspondent fiancee (Ryan Reynolds) flies in from Iraq to demand she give up her foolish notions of making it in a man’s world.
Annoyed beyond endurance she takes up Herkand on his offer to take her to Commander Fox.
They arrive and in the beginning it’s much as in the article as she meets Commander Pigeon (Shohreh Aghdashloo in a fat suit). They serve her Mongolian style sheep feast (because that’s funnier than the food in the article) and she can’t wait to get back to Kabul.
But renewed fighting in the countryside means shes’s stuck. She learns from Herkand the situation in the province. Commander Fox’s clan is feuding with the clan in the next valley their former allies. The Taliban is making headway in the area because of the division. He tells her that much may divide two sides but together they can overcome anything, their almost kiss is interrupted.
Jessica notices that a young man Dilkep (Kit Harrington) doesn’t seem interested in fighting and then she discovers he’s listening to her Zumba exercise mixes on her phone. He tells Jessica that he’s gay and that he’s in love with a young man in the next valley and they text each other but can’t be together because of the feud. Commander Fox wavers but ultimately allows Dilkep to start Zumba classes for the local young women and even shows up herself declaring that there’s a lot her clan could learn from this plucky American
(montage : Jessica becomes used to local conditions and learns to fire a gun (hilariously) and how to slaughter a sheep and how good boiled sheep intestines really taste while the young women become fitter and start a book club to discuss some of the reading material on Jessica’s e-reader. It ends with Commander Fox undergoing a makeover by Jessica as Aghdashloo emerges from the fat suit looking better than ever!).
Just then the neighboring clan attacks with the Taliban. In a quiet moment during the battle Jessica and Commander Fox bond when Jessica reveals her last name means ‘fox’ in French. Commander Fox then reveals the reason for the feud: Her father long ago turned down the marriage proposal from the man she loved, the current leader of the clan (Commander Donkey, Javier Bardem) because he didn’t offer enough goats as bride price. Jessica realizes what she has to do. With the help of Dilkep and his boyfriend she arranges a meeting between the two clan leaders. Once Commander Donkey sees the newly attractive Fox they quickly settle their differences and marry to cement the reformed alliance Together, the two clans easily overcome the Taliban.
During the subsequent victory celebrations/Zumba party her fiancee arrives to let her know she can finally return to Kabul but he treats her condescendingly and in a moment of independence she says she’s staying to continue reporting on the recovery of the province under the joint leadership of Commanders Fox and Donkey. She exchanges meaningful glances with Herkand and realizes she now loves him.
The clan members quickly behead her former fiancee and they continue the celebrations as the credits roll
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HILARIOUS. Javier Bardem as Commander Donkey totally rules.
Who came up with this piece of brilliance?
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“Who came up with this piece of brilliance?”
A brain that’s been addled by waaaay too many bad movies.
I’m kind of mortified that it was so easy for me to come up with it (I decided to leave out the subplot where Jessica discovers a local plant that provides a miracle cosmetic so the village can give up with the poppy cultivation…)
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“I’m kind of mortified that it was so easy for me to come up with it”
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Deleted scenes:
The running gag where the music swells and Jessica’s fiancee tries to do an Aaron Sorkin walk and talk while tripping balls.
Jessica organizes elections by marking everyone’s pointer finger with nail-polish.
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This is a perfect parody of the original article. And truly it’s not even much of a parody. Fun reading. Thanks for writing it Cliff!
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“This is a perfect parody of the original article. And truly it’s not even much of a parody. Fun reading. Thanks for writing it Cliff!”
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I laughed, I cried, I bought extra popcorn. –Undead Siskel and Ebert.
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