Letters to the Editor

While I found Nadya Labi’s “The Kingdom in the Closet” (May Atlantic) very informative, I was struck by the fact that there was no mention of AIDS. Certainly that must be addressed in a culture with widespread homosexual activity.

Annie Kirchner
Kensington, Md.

Nadya Labi replies:

Annie Kirchner raises a topic that deserves additional discussion. Last year, the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia reported that about 10,000 of the kingdom’s 27 million or so people were HIV-positive or had AIDS. That statistic is probably artificially low, though the numbers have been increasing in recent years even by the ministry’s own count. Still, it’s fair to say that AIDS has not reached crisis proportions in the kingdom. Any Saudi citizen with AIDS has the right to free medical care, which includes costly antiretroviral drugs.

The government’s attitude toward the disease is not wholly enlightened, however. Foreigners who test HIV-positive are often imprisoned and then deported. During my time in Jeddah, I visited the King Saud Hospital for Infectious and Contagious Diseases, which has a ward for AIDS patients. While in the ward, I saw a man lying in bed with his leg chained to the bedpost. I was unable to ask the doctors why the patient was imprisoned in this manner, because my visit was unofficial, but my translator told me that this kind of treatment is customary for foreign patients who are HIV-positive. Another journalist who visited the same hospital in 2005 interviewed HIV-positive patients who were kept in a crowded cage.

Michael Hirschorn needs to lighten up (“The Case for Reality TV,” May Atlantic). Everyone needs their guilty pleasures, and “reality” television is his. My own include the oeuvre of Patrick Swayze, but I don’t attempt to defend my fascination by criticizing the snobbery of folks who dismiss it as vapid pap—precisely because it is vapid pap and thus, a guilty pleasure.

“Reality” television is just as contrived as regular old television, so much so that its editors and various behind-the-scenes types have lobbied for its inclusion in industry awards for writing. It presents a deliberately chosen spectrum of crazies, fame whores, and the economically and emotionally downtrodden, milking them for ratings in exchange for the chance to feel “special” very, very briefly.

Is this a good thing? In some cases, it can be. Shows like Extreme Home Makeover create change for people in need of serious help, and some programs help their participants realize professional dreams. But there is an enormous element of condescension in most of these shows. Witness Hirschorn’s own commentary on Deadliest Catch, in which he writes, “The producers have made it riveting by formatting the whole season as a sporting event … that, for all its contrivance, gives structure and meaning to the fishermen’s efforts.”

Television doesn’t provide these men with “structure and meaning”—their actual jobs and real, unedited lives do that, all on their own. If Hirschorn can’t derive “meaning” without the help of a contrived sporting event, then perhaps he should skip a few episodes of America’s Next Top Model and take a philosophy class—or simply take a walk.

Matthew Morse
New York, N.Y.

Editors’ Note:

In David Samuels’s article “Grand Illusions” (June Atlantic), the name of the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, was misspelled. We regret the error.