February 28 – Mitt’s Michigan Moment; The Filmaker of “Valentino’s Ghost”; Saudi Arabia’s Hypocritical Stance With Syria

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Part 1	We begin with an update on the make or break moment for Mitt Romney with the Michigan Republican primary where the polls have just closed and we announce results as they come in. A former long- serving executive with General Motors, Debbie Dingell joins us. She is the President of D2 Strategies and Chair of the Manufacturing Initiative of the American Automobile Policy Council and we discuss the fate of Michigan’s own Mitt who campaigned on his opposition to President Obama’s initiatives to rescue Chrysler and General Motors from bankruptcy.
Part 2	Then we speak with Michael Singh, the filmmaker of a new PBS feature documentary “Valentino’s Ghost” that explores the ways images of Arabs and Muslims have been portrayed in movies starting with Rudolph Valentino’s “The Sheik”, up to the present where an Iranian film “The Separation” just won the Academy Award with its director, in accepting the Oscar, making an appeal for the medium of film to be used to generate greater cultural empathy and understanding at a time when rumors of war abound.
Part 3	Then finally, we discuss the leading role Saudi Arabia is taking in trying to overthrow Syria’s brutal Assad regime on humanitarian grounds, which given the repressive nature of the absolute monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia, many see as hypocritical. Toby Jones, a professor of Middle East History at Rutgers University and author of “Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia” joins us.