Playing Telephone
We spend a lot of time on Moroccan blogs talking about recent developments concerning the press, but how well informed are Moroccans about the same issue? Those that don’t live in one of the big cities may be completely unaware, or worse, misinformed and passing along bad information.
An example:
While talking with my husband last night, I asked him if he’d heard about the verdict. He said no, and quizzed the other Moroccans in the room with him. One said he’d heard about it, and insisted that the two editors of Nichane were going to jail for three years, he knew that for a fact. I tried to explain “suspended sentence” using my poor husband as a middleman, but the so-called expert was having none of it - he seemed pleased to say they were going to be thrown in jail. I’ve run into that a lot there - it always seems there’s one guy who likes to “hold court,” and has an opinion on every topic under the sun - normally a load of b.s., but the other guys just sit with him and nod sagely at his comments, like they agree with everything he says. My brother-in-law is like this [alert, alert, I’m talking about the family], and they actually call him “La radio” - if you start him talking, he won’t switch off. He’s the sort of guy who repeats hooey about how all the Jews were warned about 9/11 in advance, and what’s worse, people believe him. He used to spout off about America, a country he’d never been to, until my husband finally got a chance to come here. Now that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in that topic, he’s moved on to other useless and ill-informed political and social commentary.
I think I’ll fax them a French version of the Nichane verdict article tomorrow, that ought to fix them. The funny part about all this is that my father-in-law really respects my outspoken and decidedly non-traditional behavior, which surprised me. I think he sensed that we’re a lot alike, or, as he says “Maroc! Kulshi kassoul! Ana wa ntia, la.” I love that old guy.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 am
“he knew that for a fact”
hehe, thats what sometimes annoys me about my family members.
They say the biggest nonsense to conclude with that sentence.
Everything is a fact and they got it from sources close to that certain subject.
No matter what they say.
“They all eat snakes in Belgium and thats a fact! I had a conversation with an nutritionist from Belgium and he said it!”
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:44 am
Oh God, that drives me NUTS here.
Hamza’s informed, but my students are absolutely not. “But my dad told me that they’re going to jail.” Just look at the Moroccan bloggers - half of them have no idea what a ’suspended sentence’ is. And get this - the night the story broke, I read through just about every news article, trying to find out the exact amount of money, in dirhams, the journalists were fine - granted, that’s a hard thing to get right, since calculations are involved, but I read everywhere from 8000dh each to 8000dh combined to 80,000dh each or combined, and all in between.
That, and several official news sources, mostly from “developing” countries (SomaliNet was one of them) quoted that Ksikes and Al-Aji would be “IN JAIL” for three years. Way to go!
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Were you telling MY story?
I learned my lesson, now I avoid such as talks
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:58 pm
BO18 - I’m going to start repeating that snake story, ha ha.
Jill - No wonder everyone’s confused, they must be getting bad info from internet-saavy people - remember how quickly the “tsunami” story spread, even though there were just a couple of mentions online?
Adel - No, not you…were you once guilty of being a Moroccan know-it-all? That would really surprise me, you don’t seem like that at all.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
This is SUCH a Moroccan-guy-trait. I remember Simo sternly arguing with me that the US had 51 states, because his high school teacher had taught that. As a matter of fact, he’s sternly argue on ALL KINDS of b.s. topics for which he was entirely ill-informed, and when I would deign to disagree (which I rarely bothered to do), he’d get that irritatingly condescending look on his face that would drive me to think about how nice a frying pan would look applied to it at high speed.
And now we have a (very nice) Moroccan friend here in Hamburg who is exactly the same .. although somewhat more informed, still that completely annoying “I know it all” trait , with no basis in fact! Maddening!
But I remember it occasionally popping up among the Moroccan ladies too, who strongly and repeatedly assured me that “I’d catch a cold if I drank chilled water”. I finally had to make up some story about how “Americans are raised on cold water so their bodies adapt and they don’t get sick like other people do” so that they’d leave me alone. It worked.
January 24th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Jeni - God, that description is sooo accurate. I could feel my blood pressure going up just reading it! I admire your resourcefulness in that little fib you told to the ladies, ha ha.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I’m not… I made many useless conversations with know-it-all Moroccans, I have learned to avoid it, it’s better than trying to “fix it” and wasting time & energy