In the process of googling things about the blow-up in Gaza, I came across an opinion piece in the the Grauniad^* that I found rather interesting by Seth Freedman.

Well before quoting someone’s OP/Ed, I always check out their other articles, and/or Wiki them, just to make sure that they are not raving moonbats.

It is a policy that I wholeheartedly recommend.

In any case, it turns out that Mr. Freedman is not a raving moonbat, his opinions on the conflict seem to be pretty much in line with the Guardian‘s editorial stance.

He is “in country”, and writes rather a lot about what is going on there, and his “beat” seems to involve a lot of writing about what is going on with the various NGOs out there.

So, I’m perusing his articles, and I come across one that he wrote just over a week ago, “Aid workers reveal their deep malaise in ‘western-style gym’ battle,” and I gave it a read.

It appears that there is a mailing list dedicated to discussing issues confronting employees of NGOs in the territories, and someone posted what should have been an innocuous question, “Is there a proper, western-style gym in Ramallah? If so, where is it?

The response from a sane human being should be some asking what the person wants from the gym. “Western-style,” could mean fancy machines, or mixed gender, or any other number of options.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, someone suggested that the request was racist, “You forgot to add: ‘where only white people go,’ so it can’t be ‘proper’ if not ‘western-style’? If you miss western styles that much, get your ass out of here and keep it in your western world.“

From that point, it devolved in a flame war lasting at least a week.

Too many people in this world take themselves way too seriously.

In any case, it is a very amusing read.

^*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”