Sanitised for Pickles' Protection?

[mr blur]

A blogger in Egypt writes of how a school that Pickles visited on her recent trip was made "acceptable" for the very lovely and gracious First Lady.

The irony of it is that it's a USAID funded school:

http://tinyurl.com/7ask3

[kittenpants]

1. I'm sure pickles was too drugged up to truly take note of anything.

[ewagner]

2. Another fake photo-op

look at this from the article:

Nevertheless, the Alexandria education officials didn’t like how the Om el Qura school kids looked like! The girls were poor and wore dirty school uniforms. Instead of cleaning them out and distributing clean clothes that would have definitely drew a huge smile on their faces, the officials decided to replaced the kids with new kids brought from a language school! Not only that, they gave the entire school staff a one week leave! Can you imagine how humiliated the school kids and the teachers are feeling right now!

[Crankie Avalon]

3. Quite a forlorn hope from this Egyptian blogger:

"Now, Mrs. Bush can do something that would turn the world upside down here. This might cause a huge diplomatic problem between the two countries but it will definitely help the US with some PR here. Mrs. Bush can say that she is not pleased with what happened and she demands that those who lied to her and Mrs. Mubarak be held accountable. She will then invite a delegation of 10 persons from the school, 5 teachers and 5 students, to go and visit the US in the summer. That would be something."

He doesn't know her like we do. If she doesn't care enough to try and do something substantive about the schools here, she's certainly not going to care a whit about the schools in Egypt.

[Lerkfish]

4. you should read the comments...

here's one disturbing one:

One would think that merely being an Arab would be enough humiliation for anybody.
Desert Pig | 06.05.05 - 7:21 am |

and another says being poor is a passive aggressive way to garner sympathy by playing the victim (my paraphrase).