Another week has passed in the land of blogging. That must mean its about time for another Dubai bashing article in The Guardian.
To its eternal credit, the Comment is Free section (at the time of writing this on Monday) has managed to function for a full four days without the merest hint of a critical article about its unhealthy obsession.
But when they do fall off the wagon, they do it with style.
Recently, the articles have been getting steadily more ridiculous, and conversely more entertaining.
On Friday, Simon Jenkins managed to surpass even Germaine "I went on a Big Bus Tour" Greer by writing a piece which not only crowed over Dubai's apparent demise, but contained the line: "The first time I saw the place two years ago through a plane window."
Dubai bashing
But Jenkins cements his no doubt hard earned place in pseuds corner by quoting and making comparisons with the Shelley poem Ozymandias, which depicts the rise and fall of a desert civilisation (namely Egypt under Ramses).
Unsurprisingly, the latest in a long line of Dubai-bashing pieces from the usually balanced Guardian (a quick search of their site shows a clear 150-plus Comment is Free articles about Dubai), has prompted a bit of a response from bloggers in the UAE.
Alexander, from Fake Plastic Souks (http://fakeplasticsouks.
blogspot.com) hits the nail on the head with this lengthy, but informed rant: "Simon's article, however, beats even Germainipops' whine for its inaccuracy and sheer noodle-headedness. He slags off Dubai for being super-planned, architect-designed and 'bailed out by Bahrain and Dohar' [sic] among other things.
"As usual for The Guardian on Dubai, the article is so packed with untruth and unsustainable assertion that it simply does not stand up as a piece of professional writing.
"It's amazing to me that one of the UK's leading and most respected quality newspapers continues to publish completely inaccurate rubbish about Dubai from people with no qualification whatsoever to be writing about the place - and I'd include actually visiting Dubai and speaking to some people here as qualification.
"But the rubbish is popping up everywhere - not just The Guardian - to the extent where I'm finding myself, to my immense surprise, coming out of the Dubai corner boxing FOR the city."
Christopher Saul, (http://blogs.sun.com/
christophersaul) also a blogger who points out the not so positive aspects of Dubai life from time to time, has also leapt to the defence of the sandy city.
He wrote: "He [Jenkins] saw Dubai through a plane window two years ago and is now pronouncing that random anarchy will patrol our soulless boulevards.
"Like any resident, there are aspects of where I live that annoy me. There are others that are praiseworthy.
"If people want to write about Dubai, they should obviously be able to do so. The Guardian, however, needs to encourage reporting that is a little more thorough than a trip on the Big Bus tour or a quick peek through a plane window and a few conversations over dinner."
Of course, it's not just The Guardian who are peddling badly researched comment pieces which are full of half truths and glaring inaccuracies.
Ozymandias again
At least Jenkins had the experience of seeing Dubai from an aeroplane once. Elizabeth Farrelly (who wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald) hadn't even been on the same continent before passing her sentence on the city (complete with another reference to the same Shelley poem).
Both pieces (incidentally, the Farrelly one was written before the Jenkins one) prompted a response from the Economist's blog (http://economist.com/blogs/gulliver/
2009/03/look_on_my
_works_ye_dubaiwatch.cfm): "What is it about Dubai and Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias? You wait years for an opinion piece linking them, and then two come along inside a month. Simon Jenkins skewers the city in today's Guardian, slamming its nihilistic architecture and inhumanity. (Dubai's fans might want to look away.)"
Despair of the sandy city
The blogger continues: "Gulliver is not the emirate's biggest fan and has always struggled to fathom its over-heated appeal. But Jenkins seems personally affronted by the city's existence, and paints a truly dystopian portrait."
To round things off nicely, here is a little extract from the Guardian piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commentisfree/
2009/mar/20/dubai-decline-middle-east): "Hovering over Dubai is a cloud called nemesis. The first time I saw the place two years ago through a plane window, its towers were hovering in the heat over the desert, gulping up water and energy and fussed round by reputedly a quarter of the world's construction cranes.
"Even then the vision was unmistakable, of Ozymandias and his 'vast and trunkless legs of stone'.
"In centuries to come, tourists will share with Ozymandias the message: 'Look on my works ye mighty and despair.' With Shelley they will see how, 'round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.'"
