Sunday, February 05, 2006
CARTOON CAPERS
No I am not going to link up to any of these cartoons. Ok take it as a given that I support free speech - if I support it for Nick Griffin I must support it for Danish cartoonists.
I do. Taken together I would have to say that what Griffin said, that some 2nd generation Moslems might turn into suicide bombers was less offensive, though more frightening because true, than saying that Mohammed would. So yes I do support their intrinsic freedom to do so.
But it isn't courteous.
If you go around gratutously insulting people then you deserve no respect. (Note that when I accuse Bliar, the Pope, Clinton, Kohl etc etc of various sorts of murders this is entirely tuitously insulting them & at least to some extent so is Griffin's), The Danish cartoons however seem to be just silly. Much worse the reprinting by foreign papers, & even more on the web are being done just to make a mess, like a small boy at a dinner party dropping his pants.
Lets not go light on the protesters either. For at least 1300 years people in Denmark have said rude things about Mohammed - for most of that time it was almost compulsory. What difference did it make to Haroun al-Rashid? Stop going around deliberately looking for things to be insulted by. In many cases you can see that individuals are attaching themselves to this "protest" movement for their own agendas. Palestine is threatened with melt down - what exactly is the point of armed street gangs/political activists going around Gaza looking for Danes to shoot. Actually the point, as with most street gangs, is to prove how tough you are but it has nothing to do with defending the ability not to anthropomorphise your worship of the Deity (which is the relatively sophisticated reason for not drawing their prophet).
Lets try reversing it - a good way of seeing the other guy's view. Should we defend the right of somebody in the Gulf to burn the flag (ours or the US), how about celebrating 9/11. In the former I think we should & to be fair to the Americans though there is a movement to make flag burning unconstitutional it isn't & I suspect never will be - when push comes to shove they do understand what their constitution is about. 9/11 is tougher. In theory, if freedom to insult Mohammed is that important then we should also defend the right to gratuitously celebrate that but I think I would draw a line there. If there was point to celebrating it that would be different but purely gratuitously upsetting people is different. Fortunately Moslems aren't going to produce jokes about Jesus in a blender because they believe in him too.
A lot has been made of the way Dave Allan made a living from jokes about the Pope some of them pretty wicked, thus proving how much nicer we, or possibly only Catholics are. The difference is the he was obviously, indeed he made it obvious with every word, an Irish Catholic. Thats allowed. Equally a Jewish audience will love a series of funny Jewish jokes told by a good Jewish comedian but an obviously goy one will go down like a lead balloon. The Reverend Ian Paisley telling Pope jokes doesn't work either or a Frenchman telling an American audience drunk jokes about Bush. You have to be inside the group to poke fun at it. This was why the Salman Rushdie affair had a real moral dimension, he was brought up in Islam & knew exactly what he was talking about & was an informed critic, whereas this is just about people who want to start something - from a safe distance.
I do. Taken together I would have to say that what Griffin said, that some 2nd generation Moslems might turn into suicide bombers was less offensive, though more frightening because true, than saying that Mohammed would. So yes I do support their intrinsic freedom to do so.
But it isn't courteous.
If you go around gratutously insulting people then you deserve no respect. (Note that when I accuse Bliar, the Pope, Clinton, Kohl etc etc of various sorts of murders this is entirely tuitously insulting them & at least to some extent so is Griffin's), The Danish cartoons however seem to be just silly. Much worse the reprinting by foreign papers, & even more on the web are being done just to make a mess, like a small boy at a dinner party dropping his pants.
Lets not go light on the protesters either. For at least 1300 years people in Denmark have said rude things about Mohammed - for most of that time it was almost compulsory. What difference did it make to Haroun al-Rashid? Stop going around deliberately looking for things to be insulted by. In many cases you can see that individuals are attaching themselves to this "protest" movement for their own agendas. Palestine is threatened with melt down - what exactly is the point of armed street gangs/political activists going around Gaza looking for Danes to shoot. Actually the point, as with most street gangs, is to prove how tough you are but it has nothing to do with defending the ability not to anthropomorphise your worship of the Deity (which is the relatively sophisticated reason for not drawing their prophet).
Lets try reversing it - a good way of seeing the other guy's view. Should we defend the right of somebody in the Gulf to burn the flag (ours or the US), how about celebrating 9/11. In the former I think we should & to be fair to the Americans though there is a movement to make flag burning unconstitutional it isn't & I suspect never will be - when push comes to shove they do understand what their constitution is about. 9/11 is tougher. In theory, if freedom to insult Mohammed is that important then we should also defend the right to gratuitously celebrate that but I think I would draw a line there. If there was point to celebrating it that would be different but purely gratuitously upsetting people is different. Fortunately Moslems aren't going to produce jokes about Jesus in a blender because they believe in him too.
A lot has been made of the way Dave Allan made a living from jokes about the Pope some of them pretty wicked, thus proving how much nicer we, or possibly only Catholics are. The difference is the he was obviously, indeed he made it obvious with every word, an Irish Catholic. Thats allowed. Equally a Jewish audience will love a series of funny Jewish jokes told by a good Jewish comedian but an obviously goy one will go down like a lead balloon. The Reverend Ian Paisley telling Pope jokes doesn't work either or a Frenchman telling an American audience drunk jokes about Bush. You have to be inside the group to poke fun at it. This was why the Salman Rushdie affair had a real moral dimension, he was brought up in Islam & knew exactly what he was talking about & was an informed critic, whereas this is just about people who want to start something - from a safe distance.
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Well, I hope you are right about the U.S. never amending the Constitution to allow for imprisoning flag burners. But I can't be quite as sanguine on this point. In '95, a very large majority of our house of representatives voted in favor of the amendment ... with W Bush's new Supreme Court appointments, there is further jeopardy ... for more on this point see the recent post at my blog, www.roryshock.com
best to you
best to you
Neil,
Th closer one looks at the whole business, the more suspicious it becomes.
David Rennie of the 'Daily Telegraph' has noted on the blog he runs on the paper's website that the three most inflammatrory cartoons did not appear in the roifginal 'Jyllands-Posten' series, but were included in a folio taken by a group of Damish Muslims on a tour of the Middle East.
There is a distinct possibility that this furore is athe direct result of an act which, if true, would certainly be seditious.
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Th closer one looks at the whole business, the more suspicious it becomes.
David Rennie of the 'Daily Telegraph' has noted on the blog he runs on the paper's website that the three most inflammatrory cartoons did not appear in the roifginal 'Jyllands-Posten' series, but were included in a folio taken by a group of Damish Muslims on a tour of the Middle East.
There is a distinct possibility that this furore is athe direct result of an act which, if true, would certainly be seditious.
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