Showtime unleashes “Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi”
Program offers a riveting chronicle of the Libyan Dictator’s tyrannical regime, but ignores the corruption of the West
By Ray Hanania
English: The leader de facto of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Português: O líder de facto da Líbia, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Deutsch: Libyens de facto Staatsoberhaupt Muammar al-Gaddafi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Everyone knew that Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi was a psycho, but no one could do anything about it. Gaddafi embraced good causes that swept through the emotions of the Arab World, and was often cheered on as a champion of civil rights.
In the 1970s, Gaddafi donated millions to strengthen the Black Muslim movement in Chicago and build mosques to spread Islam in America, probably one of the only real public relations strategies ever implemented to improve the image of Arabs in America. But it was never sustained.
The Libyan leader was for a time blacklisted because of his anti-Israel criticism by the United States and targeted in bombings led by former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan murdered Gaddafi’s young child during one attack against the Libyan leader’s home.
It was injustice after injustice that the United States heaped on Libya as it did through much of the Arab World.
Yet behind the veil of injustice, we see that Gaddafi was no better nor no worse than Reagan or all of the hypocritical tyrants who cloak themselves in Democracy, pretending to be fair.
Gaddafi was a maniac. Like many American politicians, he engaged in immoral conduct. The difference is that in the World of Arab dictators, their true lives are not as exposed as the corruption of the American politicians in a Democracy. Libya was not a Democracy but a dictatorship, led by a dictator who used injustice to distract the eyes and minds of his people, and people in the oppressed Arab World, to other things they could hate, like the hypcrisy in America.
But then the people of Libya finally did stand up to his insanity and he was overthrown and killed himself, in the same brutal manner that his regime no doubt eliminated his critics. Two injustices do not make a right. Killing and murder are wrong. Yet apparently, in the West, some murders and killings are accepted when the targets are others.
The depravity of Gaddafi’s life has finally been exploited by the West. Showtime, which thrives on anti-Arab portrayals and discriminates against Arabs and Muslims, will broadcast a program that pulls the veil off of Gaddafi’s corrupt life and immoral regime. Showtime will relish exposing the Arabs in such a negative way because that is what the American news and entertainment media does best. They love to pillage Arabs and bury immoral and unprincipled conduct by Americans, with some exception only.
Showtime’s press release touting the new show that airs April 11 on Friday night at 9 pm EST, noting that Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi will offer an in-depth and provocative look into the tyrannical regime of one of the world’s most infamous dictators. The 90-minute documentary will premiere on SHOWTIME on Friday, April 11th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.
Protest In Dublin: “Gaddafi Is A Murderer” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Showtime expose on Gaddafi’s life promises to take viewers on a worldwide journey, gaining exclusive access and interviews with palace insiders and those who gave shape to Gaddafi’s dark dreams. They include a fugitive from US justice who helped Gaddafi kill his enemies worldwide, and was a major supplier for the dictator’s international terror enterprise; Valerie Plame, the famous CIA counter-proliferation operative; the widow of the Libyan foreign minister whose body Gaddafi kept in a freezer; the American businessman who supplied Gaddafi with lethal poisons; a female bodyguard who adored him until she saw teenagers raped and executed; as well as Gaddafi’s German rocket designer and sometime confidante. Their collective stories represent a unique and rare close-up glimpse of a brutal and contradictory, yet sometimes vulnerable dictator – a dictator who kept the world continually fascinated for the more than 40 years he occupied the international stage. Muammar Gaddafi’s story is a study in the exercise of absolute power, told not by politicians but by those who directly served the late Libyan leader who at the height of his reign was earning more than 1 billion dollars a week in oil revenues. Ronald Reagan called him a mad dog; his story is stranger than fiction.
MAD DOG: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF MUAMMAR GADDAFI was produced by Fresh One Productions for SHOWTIME. The film was directed, produced and filmed by award-winning filmmaker Christopher Olgiati.Roy Ackerman served as Executive Producer and the film was co-produced by Michael Chrisman.
Showtime Networks Inc. (SNI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CBS Corporation, owns and operates the premium television networks SHOWTIME®, THE MOVIE CHANNEL™ and FLIX®, as well as the multiplex channels SHOWTIME 2™, SHOWTIME® SHOWCASE, SHOWTIME EXTREME®, SHOWTIME BEYOND®, SHOWTIME NEXT®, SHOWTIME WOMEN®, SHOWTIME FAMILY ZONE® and THE MOVIE CHANNEL™ XTRA. SNI also offers SHOWTIME HD™, THE MOVIE CHANNEL™ HD, SHOWTIME ON DEMAND®, FLIX ON DEMAND® and THE MOVIE CHANNEL™ ON DEMAND, and the network’s authentication service SHOWTIME ANYTIME®. SNI also manages Smithsonian Networks™, a joint venture between SNI and the Smithsonian Institution, which offers Smithsonian Channel™. All SNI feeds provide enhanced sound using Dolby Digital 5.1. SNI markets and distributes sports and entertainment events for exhibition to subscribers on a pay-per-view basis through SHOWTIME PPV®.
Like most Amerian news and entertainment media, Showtime certainly is enjoying exposing the seedier, darker side of the Arab World. They will not hold back, as they do when stories address the corruption of American favored causes, regimes and politics. There is clearly a hypocrisy.
No one is defending Gaddafi or the tyrannical and immoral conduct that was his lifestyle. But we do wish that the same treatment would be given to the hypocrisy and racism that exists in the biased mainstream American News Media, a cabal of hypocrites, liars, cheats and racists who hide behind the fact that they can expose worse things in the Arab World to distract the world from their own misconduct.
Yes, in a real way, the mainstream American news media is doing exactly what the dictators int he Arab World do, putting spotlights on the “enemy” to distract their people from the depths of the depravity that is American media.
Maybe one day we’ll get to see a “TV Special” called something like “Inside the American Media: Sex, Lies, Corruption and even Murder.” And that’s not even doing justice to the seediness and immorality that is the American Fourth Estate and the corrupt politics it veils. Pull the veil off of that one, one day.
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Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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