Pop Culture Mulcher

I’m watching All American Muslim, OF COURSE. I’m in Detroit and half the time I leave the city proper, it’s to go into Dearborn. Plus, my minor for undergrad was international studies, though it was essentially four years of taking classes about and becoming increasingly fascinated with Islam. I’m watching.

I have been watching through splayed fingers, hoping that it does not do for Muslim Americans (and Arab Americans) what other TLC shows have done for every other demographic that they feature. Oh god, I know this isn’t fair, but I want these Muslim families to be perfect so that everyone will love them — an unrealistic dream I have for my own life as well. But really, fuck everyone! These people are allowed to be just as nuts on their TLC show as everyone else is on their TLC shows! It’s just that this is one of the very few shows on American TV that features Muslims doing things such as pouring milk and driving a car to work instead of clutching a bomb and driving a busload of children into the mouth of hell.

Football and child beauty pageants are essentially the same thing: the behind the scenes bitchery can be unbelievable and winners are consistently managed by egomaniacal adults with boundary issues. The Fordson football coach who moved grueling football practice to the middle of the night and then almost skipped dinner with the president because he didn’t want to “let his team down?” How do you get your head so far up your own ass? I’m not remotely apologetic or aw-shucksy about this: football is a hobby and one that should remain secondary to literally every other single thing in school other than smoking behind the bleachers. If my kid — Muslim or not, fasting or not — was told to show up to eight hour practices in the middle of the night, It Would Not Fly. And when the fucking president invites you to dinner, you go, okay? HOOOOOOLY SHIT. Your team will not free float into space or turn into sissy artists if you leave for twenty four hours.

(How cute was that guy with the pregnant wife when she went into labor? He was so nervous and not used to being nervous. Much better than Kody from Sister Wives, who seems very preoccupied with sucking face with multiple wives when one is in labor.)