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Sunday, April 04, 2004
 
Amusing anecdote

I was hanging out in the History Department the other day when Marysa Navarro and Gene Garthwaite both came into the room. (I like both the professors mentioned as people -- although in different ways, they are not the best teachers.) Prof. Navarro complained cheerily that her senior counterpart was blaming her for the Madrid bomb attacks (she's a Basque, and at that point ETA was still thought to be involved). Whereupon I responded something along the lines of, 'no, Prof. Garthwaite, it was al-Qaeda that did it, and so you're really the one to blame.' We all laughed in the knowledge that the response was not quite up to the level of the initial accusation. And of course, I meant it in jest.

But after re-reading this old piece by Ibn Warraq on Edward Said (whom Prof. Garthwaite is a devoted disciple of), I began to wonder if maybe there was more truth in my response than I had initially thought.