Wrecked Magazine
Well-Known Member
In an attempt to prove that the New York Times isn’t worth the paper it is printed on they ran an article that is becoming widespread around the Internet titled “Saudis Race All Night, Fueled by Boredom.”An uninformed gentleman by the name of Robert F. Worth published this story on the NYT without any fact checking or quite possibly leaving his apartment somewhere.
Before we get into the core of this I have made some friends in Saudi Arabi that are into Drifting claiming this was totally incorrect. The youth automotive scene is very similar to the one in the United States they have assured me. In fact, the whole middle east is historically known as a huge motorsports/racing culture which dates back to camel racing! Here is what the New York Times somehow published.
“It ranges from garden variety drag racing to “drifting,” an extremely dangerous practice in which drivers deliberately spin out and skid sideways at high speeds, sometimes killing themselves and spectators.”
Some young people, asked why they risked their lives this way, said it was because of “tufush,” a colloquial Arabic word for boredom whose meaning is said by some to derive from the gestures made by a drowning man. Drifting, which tends to attract poorer, more marginal men, has also been an unlikely nexus between homosexuality, crime and jihadism since it emerged 30 years ago. Homoerotic desire is a constant theme in Saudi songs and poems about drifting, and accomplished drifters are said to have their pick of the prettiest boys among the spectators. Drugs sometimes also play a role. But a number of drifters have also become Islamic militants, including Youssef al-Ayyeri, the founder of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who fought in Afghanistan and was killed by security forces in Saudi Arabia in 2003. “The idea behind drifting is, the economy and society don’t need you,” said Pascal Ménoret, an anthropologist who did four years of field work in Riyadh, the capital, and is now teaching at Princeton and writing a book on Saudi youth culture. “They are mostly young Bedouins who recently moved to the city, and whose lives are marked by suffering and self-destructive behavior.”
We are currently attempting to contact the author to talk to him further on the publishing of this story and his sources of information. How he determined that drag racing is heterosexual and drifting is homosexual is quite beyond our understanding. This is just a big reminder to be a voice of the sport and make sure you are properly educating fans and people alike of what you are doing out there!
Inaccurate and Uneducated Source Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/world/middleeast/08drift.html?_r=1
More...
