She’s a fan of Bono too!
Queen Rania of Jordan (a.k.a Queen YouTube as coined by the ‘Angry Arab’) is a media-obsessed Queen. In the last few years, she has used the Hashemite monarch’s good standing in the West to launch herself as a brand. The Jordanian monarchy is well-esteemed in the West because it is 1) a creation of the British colonial empire and now subservient to the new colonial power the U.S. 2) has peace with Israel and long been submissive toward Zionism and 3) due to the lack of oil money the monarchy is free from the image of extreme hedonism and decadency that many members of the Saudi royal family are known for (although the Jordanian King used to go clubbing with Saddam’s two late sons, but that was in the 1980s when Saddam was still a U.S. ally).
All of this has allowed the Hashemites to win a special place in the heart of Westerners and that it why they are often invited to this or that event. And Queen Rania never misses an opportunity to showcase herself. She had appeared on Oprah, is an annual guest at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has her own YouTube page and is involved with many other celebrity ventures.
All of this is extremely obnoxious because she is, first, not bright. She has speech writers and a London P.R. agency behind her. And even with that all she comes up with is empty cliches. She never has anything insightful or meaningful to say. She just likes the attention and her royal title and stylish reputation is all she had going for her in the way of getting ‘esteemed’ invites.
But what is more offensive about her if that when abroad she talks a lot in the ways to please Western ears: democracy, human rights, ect… But she is the Queen of an autocrat government and her husband routinely punishes and tortures dissidents. Newspapers deemed to be too critical are shut down, human rights activists are denied the ability to speak even at private events, ect… Her whole shtick is so phony. If she genuinely cared she would take her message to Jordanians and not to Western audiences. But she does not care, she only likes to speak to upper-class Western audiences because it flatters her ego, makes her feel important, and promotes her husband’s rule. How can you affect change in Jordan by speaking in English in New York? You can’t. And she has no intention to. She is simply media-obsessed and cares only about her brand image.
So vapid are her ventures that she even wastes time attaching herself to a shallow ‘film critic’ board:
This is the first year the initiative has been run, and the panel of judges for the competition includes HM Queen Rania of Jordan, Amr Khaled, Wendi Murdoch, Jet Li, Natalie Portman, Nik Powell, June Sarpong, Deepak Verma and Jonathan Caplan.
This is bound to reduce illiteracy in Jordan!
