I thought the most fascinating - and disconcerting - part of David Rohde's recent installment in the story of his captivity were the references to American pop culture. For example, he writes:

My Taliban guards slept beneath bedspreads manufactured by a Pakistani textile company and emblazoned with characters from the American television show “Hannah Montana” and the movie “Spider-Man.” My blanket was a pink Barbie comforter.

That surreal image though has nothing on the one he gives in closing - as he describes the Taliban pushing him to sing one of my favorite songs with him, their captive:

“She loves you — yeah, yeah, yeah,” we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

Somehow these images bring home for me the idea that we lived in a radically interconnected world.

Tags: David Rohde, Hannah Montana, Taliban, the Beatles, The New York Times

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 and is filed under The War on Terrorism. Comments are closed; the conversation is kept as it was.