Voice of the Reality-based Community in New Zealand
4 February 2006
In for a penny, in for a pound.
My favorite so far. I'll take it down when the Arab press stops printing racist cartoons about Jews. Courtesy of Silent Running.
10 comments:
Anonymous
said...
As usual, it is easier to be wrong than to be right, especially, it seems, when one is hobnobbing with the juvenile and polemical right.
The lovely pastiche of a triumphal Third Reich poster and Islamic images is apparently intended to outrage us and make us laugh at the same time; or rather it is supposed to be the polemicist's version of a bunker-buster up Bin Laden's back passage.
Unfortunately the image isn't even what the person making it thought it was; that is not The Prophet (PBUH, as it were) but Ali, his cousin and son-in-law and the key figure in the history of Shi'ite belief.
Of course we know it too much to ask that the right inform itself before it offers opinions as that would silence them completely, but at least one would hope they could get SOMETHING right.....Oh well...
Ah Yes--well, good thing Shiites aren't so touchy. Point remains the same...NO ONE knows what Mohammad looked like, the artist could just have easily have put in Moses, Homer, or John Brown or a stick figure with a beard. I understand that on the Left Coast, when being provocative, it's much preferred to pick on people who aren't easily provoked.
I see Mr Firmin is simply not going to be serious. Very well then.
Why should we expect anything better from a part of the political spectrum that valorizes adolescent petulance over reason and moral temperance? As any 14-year-old boy knows, once you find something that annoys someone else the best thing to do is to repeat it as often and as loudly as possible so that you can prove how clever you are at figuring out what irritates people. What a triumph for the Western civilization that not long ago in this column Mr Firmin brazenly claimed was the apotheosis of human existence.
Somewhere on the right there must be SOMEONE who does not equate free speech with shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater but apparently they dare not say anything for fear of being dismembered by a howling mob of intellectually crippled pundits who can no longer distinguish between what is possible and what is good.
I know that it is unpopular to reverse the logic of the ill-considered opinions of the right to demonstrate how bankrupt they are, but it has been mentioned that "how dare those Muslims complain about our crude lampooning of their most sacred icons; after all, violently anti-Semitic and anti-American cartoons are ROUTINELY published in this or that Muslim country!"
Well, I guess the fact that not a single American or European newspaper has printed THOSE cartoons to demonstrate how very committed they are to refusing to be intimidated by anyone in the pursuit of "free speech" is somehow different.
Since no self-righteous conservative American that I know of has voluntarily reduced their own gas and plastic consumption by the 25% represented by the portion of imported petroleum that comes from Muslim countries, are we to conclude that such people are anti-Semitic? That they actually SUPPORT the publishing of such cartoons? My my; i guess the cost of self-reflection is that you cannot have the sort of fun that good-ole boys used to have hazing coloreds in the Old South. What a pity....
This is typical left coast context-free thinking. Let's look back a bit: 1. The cartoons were originally published as part of story on the diffculty of finding artists to illustrate a childrens' hagiography of Mohammed.
2. No one insists on any right to publish anything at all in any Muslim state. Rather, the point is that Muslims who have voluntarily emigrated to Westen countries have an absolute obligation to respect the constitutional arrangements in those countries.
WAIT JUST A MINUTE; the cartoons were NOT published as you cite. The artist of the (mild and respectful) childrens' book chose not to sign his work because HE WAS AFRAID of Muslim iconoclasm. Period. A pity, but, lord almighty, not a riot.
The story got out and the paper got the bright idea that they ought to publish not the mild and merely representational images from the kids' book but gratuitously crude and insulting representions of Muhammad to "prove" that there were "artists" who were not afraid of an imagined or real big bad (Muslim) wolf! Their action is neither principled as "free speech" nor defensible as "art". It is, as I previously stated, merely the fevered and pointless poke in the eye of the barely pubescent mentality that is praised by the right as the triumph of Western civilization.
Spare us, please, from claims that such deliberate, repeated, and widespread provocation along black/white racial, anti-semitic, or even anti-American lines in this country would simply be winked at the by the enlightened masses and excused as protected "free speech". Maybe after the flames died down, perhaps, but not before.
In fact such "provocations" --that's your term, and much worse, are published in the West everyday without any rioting other than verbal. In a free society, nothing and no one is protected from comment, criticism, sarcasm, satire, ridicule or in the US, even from libel or gross personal insult. Being precious about one's symbols doesn't impose any obligation on others to respect or acknowledge this. If you choose to live in society where the press is free, you have to suck it up or go home.
PLEASE spare us more pathetic justifications of what ultimately amounts to nothing more than immature macho Yobboism of the first stripe. David Irving goes to jail for making a fool of himself for claiming that the Nazi program against the Jews was nothing more than a little harmless frat hazing BECAUSE THERE ARE LAWS that deny him the right to "create hate", but these cartoonists are supposed to be the pinnacle of Western civilization because they keep poking the scab of the wound they inflicted on their little brother. Fabulous. No wonder the right has come to look as ridiculous as the left...
Who said anything about David Irving? He has every right to be an idiot (even he is just repeating what he hears in the salons of the left.."If only those pesky Jews would just GO away......), and the Austrians have every right to clap him in irons...IN AUSTRIA. On the other hand if all those offended Austrians were to start rioting in streets, demading that all revisionist historians to be beheaded, and calling for jihad (Anschluss?), we'd have to fry their wienerschnitzel for them. Since you could count all the anti-Nazi Austrians on the toes of one hand, I don't think it will be an issue. Free David Irving!
Lord, must I hold your hand while you dip your head into the trough of common sense? The point is you don't seem to think there is anything wrong with laws impinging Mr Irving's (or anyone else's) "rights" to discuss the sacred cows of one religion (whether we take that to be "political correctness" or the tenets of the Holocaust Industry), but think that even simple neighborliness is too much to ask of anyone when it comes to the Muslims. Excuse me, Mr Firmin, but your agenda is showing...
That is of course, the precise opposite of what I said. I'll try and keep the grammar simple this time.
David Irving can say what he likes, however offensive. He has a right to be a sham and an idiot. The Austians a right to arrest him for that if he sets foot in their little fairyland. That's called sovereignty. The Austrians have no right to insist that people who disagree indulge their particular neurosis, only that they not come to Austria.
SUbstitute "Danish cartoonist" for David Irving and Muslim state for "Austria".
10 comments:
As usual, it is easier to be wrong than to be right, especially, it seems, when one is hobnobbing with the juvenile and polemical right.
The lovely pastiche of a triumphal Third Reich poster and Islamic images is apparently intended to outrage us and make us laugh at the same time; or rather it is supposed to be the polemicist's version of a bunker-buster up Bin Laden's back passage.
Unfortunately the image isn't even what the person making it thought it was; that is not The Prophet (PBUH, as it were) but Ali, his cousin and son-in-law and the key figure in the history of Shi'ite belief.
Of course we know it too much to ask that the right inform itself before it offers opinions as that would silence them completely, but at least one would hope they could get SOMETHING right.....Oh well...
Ah Yes--well, good thing Shiites aren't so touchy. Point remains the same...NO ONE knows what Mohammad looked like, the artist could just have easily have put in Moses, Homer, or John Brown or a stick figure with a beard. I understand that on the Left Coast, when being provocative, it's much preferred to pick on people who aren't easily provoked.
I see Mr Firmin is simply not going to be serious. Very well then.
Why should we expect anything better from a part of the political spectrum that valorizes adolescent petulance over reason and moral temperance? As any 14-year-old boy knows, once you find something that annoys someone else the best thing to do is to repeat it as often and as loudly as possible so that you can prove how clever you are at figuring out what irritates people. What a triumph for the Western civilization that not long ago in this column Mr Firmin brazenly claimed was the apotheosis of human existence.
Somewhere on the right there must be SOMEONE who does not equate free speech with shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater but apparently they dare not say anything for fear of being dismembered by a howling mob of intellectually crippled pundits who can no longer distinguish between what is possible and what is good.
I know that it is unpopular to reverse the logic of the ill-considered opinions of the right to demonstrate how bankrupt they are, but it has been mentioned that "how dare those Muslims complain about our crude lampooning of their most sacred icons; after all, violently anti-Semitic and anti-American cartoons are ROUTINELY published in this or that Muslim country!"
Well, I guess the fact that not a single American or European newspaper has printed THOSE cartoons to demonstrate how very committed they are to refusing to be intimidated by anyone in the pursuit of "free speech" is somehow different.
Since no self-righteous conservative American that I know of has voluntarily reduced their own gas and plastic consumption by the 25% represented by the portion of imported petroleum that comes from Muslim countries, are we to conclude that such people are anti-Semitic? That they actually SUPPORT the publishing of such cartoons? My my; i guess the cost of self-reflection is that you cannot have the sort of fun that good-ole boys used to have hazing coloreds in the Old South. What a pity....
This is typical left coast context-free thinking. Let's look back a bit:
1. The cartoons were originally published as part of story on the diffculty of finding artists to illustrate a childrens' hagiography of Mohammed.
2. No one insists on any right to publish anything at all in any Muslim state. Rather, the point is that Muslims who have voluntarily emigrated to Westen countries have an absolute obligation to respect the constitutional arrangements in those countries.
WAIT JUST A MINUTE; the cartoons were NOT published as you cite. The artist of the (mild and respectful) childrens' book chose not to sign his work because HE WAS AFRAID of Muslim iconoclasm. Period. A pity, but, lord almighty, not a riot.
The story got out and the paper got the bright idea that they ought to publish not the mild and merely representational images from the kids' book but gratuitously crude and insulting representions of Muhammad to "prove" that there were "artists" who were not afraid of an imagined or real big bad (Muslim) wolf! Their action is neither principled as "free speech" nor defensible as "art". It is, as I previously stated, merely the fevered and pointless poke in the eye of the barely pubescent mentality that is praised by the right as the triumph of Western civilization.
Spare us, please, from claims that such deliberate, repeated, and widespread provocation along black/white racial, anti-semitic, or even anti-American lines in this country would simply be winked at the by the enlightened masses and excused as protected "free speech". Maybe after the flames died down, perhaps, but not before.
In fact such "provocations" --that's your term, and much worse, are published in the West everyday without any rioting other than verbal. In a free society, nothing and no one is protected from comment, criticism, sarcasm, satire, ridicule or in the US, even from libel or gross personal insult. Being precious about one's symbols doesn't impose any obligation on others to respect or acknowledge this. If you choose to live in society where the press is free, you have to suck it up or go home.
PLEASE spare us more pathetic justifications of what ultimately amounts to nothing more than immature macho Yobboism of the first stripe. David Irving goes to jail for making a fool of himself for claiming that the Nazi program against the Jews was nothing more than a little harmless frat hazing BECAUSE THERE ARE LAWS that deny him the right to "create hate", but these cartoonists are supposed to be the pinnacle of Western civilization because they keep poking the scab of the wound they inflicted on their little brother. Fabulous. No wonder the right has come to look as ridiculous as the left...
Who said anything about David Irving? He has every right to be an idiot (even he is just repeating what he hears in the salons of the left.."If only those pesky Jews would just GO away......), and the Austrians have every right to clap him in irons...IN AUSTRIA. On the other hand if all those offended Austrians were to start rioting in streets, demading that all revisionist historians to be beheaded, and calling for jihad (Anschluss?), we'd have to fry their wienerschnitzel for them. Since you could count all the anti-Nazi Austrians on the toes of one hand, I don't think it will be an issue. Free David Irving!
Lord, must I hold your hand while you dip your head into the trough of common sense? The point is you don't seem to think there is anything wrong with laws impinging Mr Irving's (or anyone else's) "rights" to discuss the sacred cows of one religion (whether we take that to be "political correctness" or the tenets of the Holocaust Industry), but think that even simple neighborliness is too much to ask of anyone when it comes to the Muslims. Excuse me, Mr Firmin, but your agenda is showing...
That is of course, the precise opposite of what I said.
I'll try and keep the grammar simple this time.
David Irving can say what he likes, however offensive.
He has a right to be a sham and an idiot.
The Austians a right to arrest him for that if he sets foot in their little fairyland. That's called sovereignty.
The Austrians have no right to insist that people who disagree indulge their particular neurosis, only that they not come to Austria.
SUbstitute "Danish cartoonist" for David Irving and Muslim state for "Austria".
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