Interesting Article on DXB - Vanity Fair April '11

[GoreTex]

Dubai on Empty | Culture | Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/dubai-201104)

[Kamelchaser]

Interesting?

What a load of hyperpole crap. Sure, some aspects are true, but this guy obviously has shares in a company selling mixed metaphores and overused adjectives.

"Among the other 80-plus percent are the white mercenary workers who come here for tax-free salaries to do managerial and entrepreneurial jobs, parasites and sycophants for cash. For them money is a driving principle and validation. They came to be young, single, greedy, and insincere. None of them are very clever. So they live lives that revolve around drink and porn sex and pool parties and barbecues with a lot of hysterical laughing and theme nights, karaoke, and slobbery, regretful coupling."

Talk about generalisation!!!! "None of them are very clever"?....what an arsehole.
"Porn sex"?...where do I sign up for that?
Jeez, this is one of the most one-sided, blatantly exaggerated articles I've ever read. Guess it sells print though. So much for greed.

[Schibulsky]

That guy A.A. Gill is known for his controversial essays, designed to provoke the above reactions, but apart from some generalization he pretty much nails it!
"Dubai suffers from gigantism—a national inferiority complex that has to make everything bigger and biggest"
"The Gulf is the proof of Carnegie’s warning about wealth: “There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”
"Dubai is the parable of what money makes when it has no purpose but its own multiplication and grandeur. When the culture that holds it is too frail to contain it. Dubai is a place that doesn’t just know the price of everything and the value of nothing but makes everything worthless. The answer to everything in Dubai is money. "

[OBOGS]

Poor research, deliberate distortion of history and facts and a very strong bias.

Just another writer, who wanted to have a trip to Dubai paid for.

The story could have been (was?) written back home based on second hand hearsay.

Sad to see these pseudo intellectuals time after time on a mission without any attempt to understand the true essentials of this city and country.

Wonder what his blood alcohol level was during the trip...

[vbrules]

Spot on.
There is nothing so vulgar as the displays of excess from those with 'new money'.

[Alessandra]

sounds about right to me... but yep it does hurt the ego of the "not too clever" ones :)

[thegypsy]

OBOGS

A A Gill is an alcoholic but no longer drinks because of that!!

[nolimitholdem]

It's nice to have yet another article to send along when anyone asks what life in Dubai is really like. It may paint with a broad, unflattering brush, but capturing the overall essence of the place? BANG ON.

It amuses how the defenders whine about the "distortion of facts" but neglect to point out which ones they take issue with. Was it the mention of greed? Penis envy? Cultural vacuity?

And to complain about hyperbole when it is used against "Dubai, Inc.", is a bit rich...the place is BUILT on hubris (and not much else, as it is being discovered...)

:ok:

[jackcarls0n]

Went on a weeks trip to Dubai to check it out about a year back. Had some free tickets. Was fun ofcourse, getting to the ice mountain, the fancy water parks, the safari dessert.

But something was missing, the essence of a country. Felt kinda odd too, never saw an arab except the ones at the immigration and culture and history, i guess those are just limited to the pictures and crafts at the local museums.

It all just seemed fake. Fake beaches, fake ice, fake pretty much everything.

The article does hit BANG ON.

[CFM-56NG]

"Emiratis are born retired. They waft through this city in their white dishdashas and headscarves and their obsessively tapered humorless faces. They’re out of place in their own country. They have imported and built a city, a fortress of extravagance, that excludes themselves. They have become duplicitous, schizophrenic. They don’t allow their own national dress in the clubs and bars that serve alcohol, the restaurants with the hungry girls sipping champagne. So they slip into Western clothes to go out"

ok them .... tell me this is a lie..:E
Any one whom actually lived in Dubai knows that this is true.....
Who never went to rock bottom..... hhahahahaah
or even budhabar......:ugh:

[GoreTex]

I think he is pretty much right, dubai and it locals changed but not for the better.

[R6DXB]

Gore, do agree, but the same goes for us expats and their wifes.....need to take care as one day u will return to the real world !

[Jet II]

The first thing you see when you arrive is the airport

No ****!

Wonder how much he gets paid for these astute observations? ;)

[Schibulsky]

JetII, I am sure he gets more for his article than any moron for quoting half a sentence out of context. :ugh:

[Jet II]

OK - just for ****bulsky..




The first thing you see When you arrive Is the airport, with it's echoing marble halls. It's big enough to be the hub of a continent

Well it might be big enough for a small continent but it certainly is not big enough for EK - hence the gazillions spent on the extension.

Is that negative enough?:ok:

[4HolerPoler]

Priceless article. Had me in stitches. Take it with a pinch of salt. If it offends you.

[FrankR]

Life is never so cut and dry.

I love Dubai. For those of you who have lived in more than two places in the Middle East, where do you prefer? Cairo? Jeddah? The ever popular Ad Dammam?

Sure, Dubai grew too fast in the past ten years, but that is hardly a condemnation. And shallow rich people are hardly unique to the region.

My opinion is that the author has no story and was looking for attention.

FR

[halas]

I too enjoy life here in Dubai and could think of a hundred worse places to live off the top of my hat. These would include a majority of EK destinations.

As l live on the fringe of DXB as an expat with family in company accommodation, l can observe, to a great extent, what the author of this article was talking about, and nod my head in agreement.

I enjoyed it. Complete with stereo types and gross generalisations. But l feel with a limited amount of space for the author to write what he thinks, l am sure we can all get the gist (and are very well aware) of what he is saying.

halas

[SMT Member]

Perhaps a bit of artistic exaggeration here and there, but by and large the article hits dead centre. The fat, incompetent and lazy locals (youth especially), their sense of entitlement born of nothing but inherited artificial wealth and stupidity, the morally questionable expat scene, the malls, the roads going nowhere, the uselessness of it all, the corruption and nepotism and, above all. the greed and obsession with money - it's pretty much spot on.

As for the expats being not too clever, well, if any of the comments on this site relating to any manager (and a very large part of western expats commands just such a title) is anything to go by, then it's not far off the mark. Discounting that as hearsay, which is tempting, I can only rely on my own experiences with the dozens upon dozens of expats we've shipped off sandpit way. And I'm afraid to say that a fairly large part of them were pretty far from being the sharpest knife in the drawer, and had long since either hit - or in come cases even passed (Peter Principle) - the point where their careers would take them no further. Except they could potter of to the land of Sand, and build little empires of incompetence and misguided sense of achievement. After all when the US DoD is throwing money at you like it's going out of fashion, even the most incompetent flock of baboons can manage to get decent numbers on a P&L sheet. But once that stops, the music stops and a lot of the guys will have to face something they'd rather not: Reality of returning to Europe, the US or dunnunda.

Let me just finish this off by making it absolutely clear the above rant is directed at expat managers only, not by any stretch of imagination towards the boys and girls sat up the front end of 200 million worth of spare parts flying in tight formation.

[Shytehawk]

A A Gill has got it absolutely right and who leaps to criticise his remarks about the expats being none too clever? Somebody who demonstrates his lack of greycells by calling himself Kamelchaser. QED.

[helen-damnation]

AA Gill is a p$!(k who needs sensationalism to keep his name in the news. He may indeed have made some good observations, but he also spouts some complete crap.
A twit who came for a freebie, nothing more, quite a lot less :rolleyes:

[Schibulsky]

Same old story...someone criticizes DXB/EK/UAE...the messenger is being attacked...the style or his bias is criticized...some name calling...but still waiting for any rectification of the actual message...:bored:

Btw. A journalist trip to Dubai is not a freebie, it's part of their effing job...or do you see your layovers also as freebies??:rolleyes:

[Capetonian]

It is the Daily Mail/Hate but there has to be at least a basis of truth.

British tourist Lee Bradley Brown 'beaten to death' in Dubai police cell | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1376649/British-tourist-Lee-Bradley-Brown-beaten-death-Dubai-police-cell.html)

A rather more restrained version of events in the Torygraph

British tourist 'beaten to death in Dubai prison cell'
A British tourist was beaten to death in a Dubai prison cell, it has been claimed.
Lee Bradley Brown

Image 1 of 2
Lee Bradley Brown, from Dagenham in East London, is understood to have flown alone to Dubai for a holiday Photo: FACEBOOK
British tourist 'beaten to death in Dubai prison cell'

Image 1 of 2
Lee Bradley Brown is understood to have flown alone to Dubai for a holiday where he was staying at the Burj al Arab hotel Photo: BLOOMBERG
7:38AM BST 14 Apr 2011

Lee Bradley Brown was on holiday in the Arab state when he was arrested and thrown in jail.

It is alleged that he was beaten up by a group of police officers and then dragged from his cell.

Mr Bradley Brown was not allowed access to a lawyer or given enough food and water, it was claimed.

The first his family heard about the incident was when his sister received a call from a fellow inmate who contacted her in the UK.

The prisoner had apparently found her number as the next of kin contact in his passport which was left in his cell.

Mr Bradley Brown’s family were formally told about his death on Wednesday.

His sister, who did not want to be named, told The Daily Mail: “It is very difficult at the moment, as you would expect, and his mum is extremely upset.

“We were the ones that first contacted the British embassy in Dubai with concerns after an inmate out there got in touch with us.

“We were told unofficially on Tuesday it was true and the worst was confirmed on Wednesday.

“The inmates we spoke to at the jail are currently waiting to give statements to the police but now they’re in fear for their own lives.”

Mr Bradley Brown, from Dagenham in East London, is understood to have flown alone to Dubai for a holiday where he was staying at the Burj al Arab hotel.

He was arrested on April 6 for alleged assault, intimidating behaviour and using abusive language, it was claimed.

A British embassy spokesman said: “I can confirm the man died in custody and that the embassy is taking the allegations very seriously.

“We are launching an investigation and working with Dubai police.”

[Kamelchaser]

A A Gill has got it absolutely right and who leaps to criticise his remarks about the expats being none too clever? Somebody who demonstrates his lack of greycells by calling himself Kamelchaser. QED.


You're absolutely right Shytehawk. Someone's nom-de-plume is far more important in judging the value of their opinion than what they actually say.

Hence forth I shall be known as.....Professor Kamelchaser.

Everybody will then surely value my opinion as my name will most certainly imply intelligence. How silly of me to previously have thought that my arguments would be taken seriously.