Over at Breitbart.com. there's an excellent blog post entitled, 6 Reasons Pamela Geller's Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma. It's the first thing I've read on the topic that made me think that Geller was something other than an attention-seeking, narcissistic bonehead. The grabber for me was the first reason: The Oppressor Chooses the Form of Protest, Not the Protester.
Pamela didn't seek to blaspheme Islam, she blasphemed Islam because Jihadists told her, through threats of violence, that she was not permitted to do this. Had they told her she was not allowed to paint her house pink, she would have painted her house pink.
The other part that got me was this:
The 1965 Democrats and today’s Democrats are also bigots. The same CNN that protects Islam from offense by blurring the Muhammad cartoons, does not blur the Piss Christ.Dear progressives - if you didn't want us to blaspheme Islam, maybe you should have avoiding blaspheming other religions in the first place. Whereas I laid the fault (and I still do, to some extent) at the feet of Pam Geller for organizing a blasphemy party, really, she was just playing by the rules set by the progressives in the first place when they lionized that no-talent cretin Serrano and his juvenile Piss Christ. They doubled down on it with their patronage and critical acclaim of The Book of Mormon. You made the rules, punks, we're just living by them.
I guess what I'm objecting to is this. The problem isn't Jihadists, it's the culture that thinks blasphemy is some kind of badge of honor. When this is performed at a major cultural awards event, blasphemy is no longer speaking truth to power, blasphemy is the power. Pamela Geller jumped in and joined the powerful in attacking what's left of the sub-culture that still believes in honor and respect for symbols of faith and nation.
When a conservative rebel like Geller allies herself with the forces of cultural entropy, the results will be good in the short run (publicity for the fight against Jihadists), but bad in the long run (one more voice saying that anything goes). In a way, she strengthened their hand.
Jihadists are strong because they stand for something against an American culture that stands for nothing. If we are united only in our desire for the freedom to do whatever we want, we stand for cultural chaos. They stand for something positive. We cannot rally to the flag because we've burned the flag. We can't stand for America because we've dissolved the nation by opening our borders. We can't stand for a moral code because morality is now utterly personal. They've got solid alternatives to all of that, ones their side can rally around.
Yes, Pamela Geller followed in the footsteps of great revolutionaries of freedom. Unfortunately, she allied herself with great enemies of civilization.
7 comments:
"Whereas I laid the fault (and I still do, to some extent) at the feet of Pam Geller for organizing a blasphemy party ..."
1) Have you even *seen* any of the cartoons, and specifically the winning enrty (there are two catroons on this page, by the same artist, depicting the original Mo and one of his namesakes)?
2) Ol' Mo is just a man -- he's not God -- how can one *possibly* blaspheme in drawing a cartoon of him? Even the disgusting sort that Charlie Hebdo specialized in can't *really* be blasphemy, since he isn't God;
3) Moslems themselves have been making pictures to represent Ol' Mo for about 1400 years;
4) Ol' Mo was a thief and murderer, a rapist and a child rapist -- speaking the truth about Islam and Mohammad is what the fuss is about.
It's not just cartoons. they'll kill you (and each other) for dancing at weddings, for playing music, for listening to music, fore possessing musical instruments, for having the wrong haircut, foreshowing your face, your ankles, for driving...
Posted on YouTube, videos show the stoning of a teenage girl who had spoken to a boy she liked on the phone. Other teenage men jockeyed for position with their cellphones to get a good shot of the final death blow, the cinder block crushing her skull. They're proud of it and they post it on YouTube in celebration.
Right after 9/11, before politically correct protectionism kicked in, TIME Magazine did a story on life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and told of musicians who buried their instruments in the sand, lest they be killed for practicing their craft.
It's girls going to school, it's women working, it's men unable or unwilling to control their own impulses so they force women into body bags, never to feel sunlight on their face again...
It's anything the mob decides is 'offensive' loosely wrapped as law, and it is adherence to "Sharia Law.'
Pamela Geller has been sounding the alarm for years, the 'Honor Killings
' here in the US, and more. It's sad that people turned away and called her crazy because they were embarrassed by her warnings.
It's not just cartoons.
It's anything that is good and holy, it's everything about our freedom, it's about man's inhumanity to man, ultimately.
Illion: I've seen the winning cartoon. Meh. It's not nearly as bad as the Charlie Hebdo rubbish.
I get the thing about Mo and Joseph Smith, for that matter. I'm just not sold on the need to crudely trash either of them. Hemingway was a bit of a pig, too. Shall we burn his books? Nah.
Rose: Yeah, the honor killings are a big issue. Even bigger to me is the genital mutilation of women. Horrible.
I guess I'm just separating out the issues. Yes, I agree that these things need to be discussable. No, I don't think that we need to go full gangsta rap with our culture.
See also: President Eisenhower and Judge Robert Bork on censorship.
"I've seen the winning cartoon. Meh. It's not nearly as bad as the Charlie Hebdo rubbish."
Talk about damning with faint praise. It's nothing like what Charlie Hebdo regularly churns out ... AND, it perfectly illustrates what is going on.
Really, you do need to free you mind of the leftism in which we are all marinated (practically from birth).
@ Ilion: #2 is an excellent point. Mohammad is certainly treated as though he were a god by his followers.
Well, considering that Allah is pretty much Mo's alter-ego (*), I suppose it's understandable that the Slaves of Allah would terat Mo as a god.
(*) Mo's favorite wife, Aisha -- you know, the one he "married" when she was six and [foul-word]ed when she was nine -- is reported, by Moslems to have said to Mo: "How greatly your god loves you: he always commands you to do exactly what you want to do." This may have been following Allah's command to Mo that his adopted son must divorce his wife and than Mo must "marry" her. But, hey! Allah also at the same time invalidated the adoption (and forbade future adoptions), so it's not like it was incest to [foul-word] his son's wife.
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