Glenn Reynolds comments on the latest ramblings of our own poor man’s Jeanine Garofalo…
[A]ccording to some on the left, raising concerns about Muslim extremism, death threats, and censorship just proves that you’re — a right-wing extremist!
Antonia “Notice Me!” Zerbisias of the Toronto Star, — best known in the blogosphere for attributing an anonymous commenter’s remarks to blogger Stefan Sharkansky and making the bizarre claim that warbloggers have “fallen silent” — is now claiming that the whole thing is about Muslim-hating Westerners. Riiight.
She — and remember, this is a salaried journalist at Canada’s largest paper, who, on every other issue, like allowing Al-Jazeera on Canadian tv, is all for free speech — explains that publishing the cartoons in North American papers “was not necessary to understanding the story. As many editors have explained, merely describing the cartoons is sufficient for making the point.”
What. A. Dumbass.
She goes on:As for violence, I would guess that Muslims are more victims than perpetrators.
After all, when Irshad Manji published her controversial “The Trouble With Islam: A Wake Up Call for Honesty and Change” in 2003, no harm ever came to her despite so many � again right-wing � bloggers’ musings that it would. That said, their fears helped Manji move a lot of books around the world.Well, maybe no harm came to her because, unlike Theo Van Gogh, she travels with a bodyguard, had her windows replaced with bullet proof glass, and so forth. This is the same sensitive Zerb who, while recently chiding a commentor on her blog for daring to use the “offensive” phrase “WASP”, once referred to Manji as a “professional lesbian.”
I liked her in World Police, though. Garofalo, I mean.
Re: trolls… this site has had over 50,000 comments in under 2 years. Hell – I don’t even read all the comments, much less try to police everything that goes on in here.
Regular readers should take on a little responsibility for not responding to them, or advising the newbies to do the same.
my God is bigger
The Zerb, though surprisingly really stupid this time, doesn’t surprise at all in her total moonbattery.
What do we expect from the MSM?
Just watch them not learn the lessons they should… and watch the bloggers’ relevance continue to rise.
I posted this comment at the Zerb’s “moderated” blog about nalf an hour ago. Will be interesting to see if she posts it.
An excellent column on “la trahison des intellectuels”, by Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 8: “Why the Danish cartoons are works of art”
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=7e1e8e6e-a937-4924-89b5-8af99d06a2d7&p=2
Excerpts:
‘It seems Western commentators have come to a rough consensus about the Danish cartoons that unleashed fury all over the Muslim world. The rioting and death threats are excessive, but the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, is also at fault for commissioning and publishing the cartoons. It was a juvenile stunt intended to do nothing more than offend. The editor is an idiot…
It’s a remarkable contrast with 1999.
The controversy that year began when the Brooklyn Museum of Art hosted an exhibit called Sensation, featuring the sort of disturbing and strange work that delights modern art fanciers while leaving most people bewildered.
The most controversial piece was The Holy Virgin Mary by British artist Chris Ofili, a portrait of an African Virgin Mary done in oil paint and elephant dung. Sprinkled throughout were pictures of genitalia cut from pornographic magazines.
Christian conservatives were — unsurprisingly — horrified at seeing the Mother of God done up in scat and porn. Rudy Giuliani, then the mayor of New York, called the exhibit “sick” and tried to yank the museum’s public funding.
The liberal counter-assault was furious and determined. The artistic and journalistic elite loudly defended the museum and polls found most New Yorkers sided with the museum…
The mayor’s defeat was complete when a federal court barred him from taking the museum’s funding. The “rednecks” had been routed, crowed an arts commentator in the Toronto Star [Zerb: any views?]…
…the standard position was that shocking art, even offensive art, is a necessary and valuable contribution to public life. “Part of the power of the work is to evoke discussion,” said one artist. The very fact that The Holy Virgin Mary had provoked furious debate was proof of its worth.
This is a bedrock idea in modern art and literature. Touch the taboo. Say the unspeakable. In doing so, artists and writers wake people from their half-conscious daily routines, make them look around, think, imagine, and ask “Why?” The preferred word in art schools and academia is “transgression.”
“Art is at its best when it generates a deep response from a broad community, when it challenges the status quo. This type of contemporary art intentionally cries out, ‘Wake up, world!’ Its goal is social change,” said Louise May, the artistic director of a Canadian arts centre in a commentary broadcast on the CBC. “So the next time you’re confronted by an art work whose only purpose seems to be to offend, pause before you react…
And yet today, many of those who stoutly defended the Brooklyn Museum of Art are disparaging the Danish editors and artists for having being so juvenile as to create and publish works they knew would cause terrible offence…
In 1999, the arts community was right to defend the value of transgression in art. The liberal intelligentsia was right. Liberal journalists were right.
But today, they are wrong. What the Danish editors and cartoonists did was not silly or juvenile. It was courageous. It was magnificent. It was art.’
Mark
Ottawa
Kathy “If your response to that news wasn’t “Arabs are violent retards”, then you are a moral midget.”
Or just a bit better travelled. Some of us actually meet and mingle with a lot of these people and subsequently have a different opinion of them. The arabs I know aren’t “violent retards” so why should I start calling them that?
BTW, Iranians are aryan (just enter aryan into wikipedia) does that make all aryan’s “violent retards” too?
Jose: “does that make all aryan’s [sic] “violent retards”? Just some, e.g. the Nazis and the Taliban (the name of Afghanistan’s national airline is Ariana Afghan Airlnes).
Mark
Ottawa
Greg “By the way can anyone point me to a site where I can view the moral outrage of the left over the Piss Christ exhibt?”
We don’t give a crap, sorry.
Texas Canuck “So why doesn’t the mainstream muslim express outrage at the atrosities committed in the name of islam, I don’t know.”
They do. We had a press conference in London about this yesterday. There were about three journalists present. Brown men screaming bloody murder makes for much better headlines. Mind you most of us here in Europe rub elbows with muslims on an everyday basis so we already know the vast majority of them are reasonable and peaceful people.
aslo by Texas Canuck “If you look around most if not all valid religions preach some if not all these things so what’s up with the extremists?”
Islam and Christianity aren’t all that different, as are Catholics and Protestants. Unfortunately Islam has a lot more extremists whereas christianity in the west has become much more muted in its intensity over the past two hundred years. Its even dying out completely in many countries. If anything I suspect its the modernization of their culture that is upsetting the die hards. A lot of young muslims are no longer observing ramaddan and adopting a western lifestyle. That’s a threat to them.
We in the west have had modern nation states for hundreds of years whereas most muslim countries are much younger.
Religous fundementalism doesn’t die quietly or quickly but it does fade in time.
Kathy “You like to throw around words like “racist” etc, as if they still actually mean something.”
Of course it means something. Racism is an unrealist negative bias like thinking of all black people as “lazy niggers” or all arabs as “violent retards”.
Of course racist people never want to believe that they are at the time.
Zerb is a Greek? I didn’t know Greeks could be that stupid or petty (see Michelle Malkin comment).
On behalf of the enlightened Greeks of this world (not the communist sympathizers my father tried to eradicate), I apologize.
Can you imagine her and Strombolopoulos getting hitched? They couldn’t find a home big enough to house those egos…