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By Sumayyah Meehan November 24, 2009 When Ross Gellar blurted out Rachel Green’s name, at the alter when he was marrying Emily ‘whoever’, residents of the Middle East gasped just as loudly as their American counterparts did. And when Kate set up Sammi Brady so that Lucas would call off the wedding on the day of the ceremony, residents of the Gulf were all abuzz and stunned with the shocking news. There may be no love lost between nations of the Middle East and Washington, after years of U.S. foreign policy bias and stigmatization. Nevertheless American dramas and sitcoms, like Days of Our Lives and Friends, are as beloved to the Arab world as the ‘hookah’. Shows like Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Lost are the daily bread and butter of residents of the Middle East who often plan their schedule around their favorite shows. Fatwas against the intrinsic evils of television are plentiful in the Arab world. However, most people ignore them in favor of enjoying a little escape from the reality of the daily grind. I mean, really, can life truly be as heart wrenching as Meredith Grey’s love life? Or as tragic as the forlorn love affair between Twilight‘s Edward and Bella? Make-believe characters and concocted scenarios really help the rest of us put our lives in perspective. The MBC Group stationed in Saudi Arabia and OneTV stationed in the United Arab Emirates are the ‘big dogs’ in broadcasting in the Middle East. Both of these stations keep the good times rolling with American dramas and sitcoms, albeit a season or two after they have aired on American TV. Programs currently airing in the US will never see the light of day on Arab channels until they have run their full course (reruns) in America. The ‘sloppy seconds’ are then sold off to Arab networks and scooped up by grateful viewers. There is one exception to the Arab love affair with American television, and that is Iran. The Iranian government only allows a handful of American television shows to air across its collective screens. Despite that, Iranian ‘couch potatoes’ have turned to the power of the Internet to override their government’s restrictions and get their daily sitcom fix. There are a sizeable number of Iranians that download their favorite shows straight off the Internet and even a greater number who turn a profit by selling copies of the shows on DVD on the underground black market. Life in the Middle East can be stifling at best, from time to time, as the region is often at the center of internal or external aggression and under the microscope of a global audience. American TV provides an escape from an otherwise rigid existence. http://www.elanthemag.com/index.php/site/blog_detail/arabs_hate_american_foreign_policy_but_bring_on_the_tv-nid512486643/