Beware, incoming Americans; this is important stuff :-)
NEW DELHI — Angry fans burned a U.S. flag in protest Sunday, a Cabinet minister suggested searching visiting Americans and an actress tweeted her outrage after Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan said he was detained for questioning at a U.S. airport.
what i found interesting is that in many parts of the world, people would be outraged at preferential treatment of celebrities or VIPs. yet in this case, ordinary people are outraged he wasn't given preferential treatment because of his VIP status.
Read the paper, someone lost his luggage, it wasn't the 2 hours the paper first reported, it was 66 minutes, and there weren't any bombs on I-day so they had to have SOME knee-jerk stuff in the paper...
An NRI said to me that non-Muslims get the same treatment when their name is on a list. Everyone has to take their shoes off. The NRI asked why did Muslims expect better treatment than others?
I might add that the NRI didn't know who this actor was..
...the NRI didn't know who this actor was.
That seems to be what everyone's having trouble coming to terms with. Not to worry, it happens among famous domestics as well: just last week an old man in a raincoat observed wandering around a New Jersey neighborhood in pouring rain was picked up by police for identification; since he had none on him, they had to hold him until they could verify his claimed identity. The policewoman's encounter with her sargeant:
"I got out of my car and said, "Sarg, this guy says he's Bob Dylan,'" Buble said. "He opened the car door, looked in, and said, 'That's not Bob Dylan.'"
...It was Bob Dylan.
It was a shameful incident and even people here in Pakistan are angry with that.
One of the ironies, when the Americans come to Pakistan or India, our premiers and high officials receive at the airports and when we go there, we're treated like some aliens.
I'd term the incident as racism.
When the Americans are caught in some other country, the whole American & Western media, foreign office move quickly, voilate the laws of that country and the culprit is released, the LAW is only in U.S?
I'd quote the example of Myanmar, the recent incident.
Would we ( Indians, Pakistani) ever be able to detain any American actor or official at any airport whether India or Pakistan?
The answer'd be nay.
Think about that.
America is in the habit of detaining and refusing entry to all sorts of people at the border, brits are often turned back.
Oh please, his name matched a name on the terrorist watch list. Yes, there is absolutely racial profiling in the US--no one could deny that--but his name actually matched a name on the watch list! If Brad Pitt's name matches a name on an Indian watch list, I hope they will take him aside to question him as well. Indian and Pakistani airport security officials should "detain" American actors if they have a reason to (SRK wasn't really "detained"). And if such a thing happened, I don't think the American people would care nearly as much as Indians seem to care about this. I mean, he was only held for an hour or so. Come on, burning the American flag in Allahabad is a huge overreaction!
Oh, and if Manmohan Singh came to the US, I don't think he'd be treated as an alien. He would be greeted by high officials and with much respect. An actor is different than an important national leader such as a prime minister.
Also, I think it is interesting that Indians expect SRK to be recognized in America. Newsflash: Bollywood stars are not global stars. SRK may be the most famous man in India, but he's an unrecognizable nobody to the average American. (Sorry, but that's the truth.) And even if he was famous in the US, that doesn't mean he deserves preferential treatment. I don't think any celebrity from any country should get preferential treatment.