Walid Harfouch Dismisses Bio Questions as ‘Racist’

According to Wikipedia, Walid and his brother, Omar, were born in Tripoli, Lebanon (not to be confused with Tripoli, Libya).

A successful, well-connected and controversial entrepreneur, Walid became a citizen of Ukraine in 2005. He speaks fluent Russian but not Ukrainian.

In late 2004, he led Robert Ménard of Reporters Without Borders on a Ukrainian tour meant to legitimize freedom of the press à la Yanukovych. (A few months earlier, an article in Libration had linked Ménard to Omar Harfouch and Muammar al-Gaddafi.)

After the Orange Revolution, Walid chased Yushchenko’s son-about-town in his Paparazzi magazine and suffered a burned Bentley. In the last presidential campaign, he coached Hanna Herman, Yanukovych’s right-hand woman.

For this longstanding service, they appointed him vice chairman of the National Television Company of Ukraine (NTCU). Just imagine a vice president of France Télévisions or RFI who doesn't speak French.



Asked about his vision for the company considering his “непроста біографія” (“tricky/checkered biography”), he dismissed the whole question as “racist.”

Attempts to reason with Walid failed. He called host Roman Skrypin “racist” and refused to answer the question. Roman called it a day.

Why overreact to a legitimate question aimed at filling in the gaps?

Should a public employee use his membership in an anti-racist organization as a defense against bona fide inquiries into his qualifications?

Speaking of qualifications, NTCU (read: taxpayer) has already been fined for missing the deadline on submitting Ukraine’s Eurovision entry, marred by a plagiarism scandal.

Video embedded from: http://zaua.org/pg/video/editorial_1/read/19766/

Verka Goes to Helsinki!
Ukraine-Mocking Comedian to Represent Ukraine at Eurovision Song Contest

Yee-hah! Verka Serduchka, a faux female character created by Andriy Danylko impersonating a train conductor who can’t get enough of marginalizing Ukrainian culture alongside Russian chauvinist stereotypes, should be packing his bags for Helsinki. Ironically, whatever he sings there on May 12 will most likely be interpreted as a quintessence of Ukrainian culture.

Over the last decade, Andriy Danylko has perfected his kinky pseudo-ethnic character into a huge commercial success in Russia and eastern Ukraine. He won the ticket to Helsinki having outperformed several other artists in a nationwide SMS vote broadcast live on state television. So how does someone who masquerades as the Ukrainian equivalent of the N-word get to go to Eurovision? Well, I guess it tells a great deal about Ukraine’s post-Soviet identity crisis. So far, only one local FM station has voiced a protest.

If, for some reason, Kazakhstan fielded Sacha Baron Cohen, I’d rather vote for him than Andriy Danylko. After all, Borat Sagdiyev did not mess with Kazakhstan without making some pointed jabs at Amerikastan. With Verka Serduchka, it’s always been a one-way street.