This is a hoax I am told but I don't remove posts after I post them. Please calm down. She is not--repeat NOT--a Muslim. No need for panic

Distant Saidian Melodies

In a bizarre case of inverted serendipity, a recent obsession collided with my long time obsession. Angry Arab posted a piece of "news" in which stars none other than my beloved Austenian heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and fails to recognize the news for an obvious hoax, until poked into a semblance of intelligent awareness:

"Thursday, April 14, 2011

This is a hoax I am told but I don't remove posts after I post them. Please calm down. She is not--repeat NOT--a Muslim. No need for panic

"Sister Cora-Ann, a Catholic nun from the Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Dayton, Ohio got the surprise of her life yesterday, when she was asked to leave the plane she had just boarded at the Omaha International Airport. “I had just sat down in my seat, and started to thank God for our blessings and recite a prayer in Latin”, she recalled, when one of the passengers sitting next to me called the flight attendant. The passenger was Elizabeth Bennet, who later stated: “It is not that we were prejudiced, but she did seem very suspicious. She was dressed in Muslim garb and just before we were about to take off, she started mumbling something in an Arabian or Talibani-sounding language. What was I supposed to do?” Damien Thorn was a passenger seated in the adjacent row and said: “I knew there was something sinister about her, the moment she stepped into the plane. She was wearing those burqa clothes that you see the Iranian women wearing, and she only had a very small carry-on bag.” The flight attendant responded to the call and asked Sister Cora-Ann for her name, boarding pass and a photo ID." (thanks Ali)"


Not exactly the quality of intellectual scepticism and general knowledge one would hope to find in a former free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, and a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley, is it? To say nothing of a genuinely angry Arab who must have cut his academic milk teeth on the orientalist theories of Edward Said, in which a special place of contempt was held for Jane Austen.

Furthermore, how could he miss the pun in the name of the nun? "Cora-Ann", suspected of reciting from the Koran? Or the quoted passenger named Frodo Baggins? Is it possible that the professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley is not only lacking in knowledge but also suffering from a severe humour deficiency?

In his frantic attempt to correct his mistake, AA still finds there is still room for scoffing at anti-Muslim paranoia exhibited in a story that is obviously a spoof. If it weren't too far fetched I would suspect him of having some difficulty separating reality from fiction. Reminds me of the very serious fellow in this dialogue:

A: Your sister is a whore.

B: But I don't have a sister.

A: Oh, sorry about that. But your sister is still a whore.