More OMAN: Fuck Christopher Dickey!

Thinking about Oman. How to get there, when?

Then Omar sends me a piece of shit typical garbage article from a hack, Christopher Dickey, which is nothing but a sordid review of $500-a-night hotels in the country. So I write Newsweek online:

"What kind of armchair reporting is this? Oman has more going for it than a bunch of luxury hotels, I hope. This article reads like an ad for fat-cat hotels; is this what Dickey does now? Don't fat-cats wish to beat the city and get out into the wilds, even luxuriating in a $1500-a-day camel and tent trek? I fully realize this article is part of a luxury travel series, but Dickey makes Oman look like another stop for fearful rich twits who think Mango nectar on ice with CNN every morning is experiencing the world. Give me a break! Oman is on nobody's radar as far as i can see, and this sort of pap from Dickey perhaps explains why. Unless you've got $583 a night to kick the coolies around, why bother to go? Come on Christopher. You're a writer. Is the elevator going up or down? Push some buttons and tell us something about an interesting part of the world instead of regaling us with the comforts of the inter-continentals. Why insulate yourself from a country and its culture? Your article contains a dash of history, a sprinkle of personal insight, and a load of hot pompous air. Newsweek should be ashamed of this drivel."

Then I write a note to my friend Christie B., who got me buzzed about Oman to begin with:

"Look, this is the kind of limp, thoughtless B.S. on Oman pushed by the mainstream media. An article about luxury hotels! And Christopher Dickey is a well-known writer. Embarrassing. Where is the story about the geometry of sand, or the alchemy of sun and water, or 500 castles in the sand? Oman is firmly on my radar thanks to you, but I don't see it represented anywhere in a way the Whitney Biennial would care for. Definitely this winter, I'm headed there to do a completely artistic appraisal. Not what people do there, in Muscat or on the sands, but what I see and what I feel when I walk around with my eyes open."