Yoo hoo, Osama! Are you out there?
How do you say “It’s the economy, stupid” in Arabic, Pashto, Urdu? Because at its most illuminating, Morgan Spurlock’s compelling if self-indulgent travelogue investigation “Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?” reminds us that a livelihood isn’t just “America’s No. 1 issue” as CNN reminds us. This gutsy, goofy sojourn to countries linked in some fashion to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and Spurlock’s time spent talking to folk on the streets, in their homes, in their mosques suggest a deeply common truth: Deprivation bites. It makes people vulnerable. It humiliates them. It angers. A visit to Morocco reveals that the five coordinated suicide bombings on May 16, 2003 in Casablanca, Morocco, attributed to al-Qaeda, were carried out by young men from the same shantytown. We’ve heard this socio-economic analysis of extremism before. But hearing it from a Moroccan journalist as he picks his way through that neighborhood carries a different weight. Spurlock first made an impression on mov
