dev
Stanley Fish, anti-liberal
If you descended from Mars and read Stanley Fish’s Feb. 12 NYT op-ed on the cartoon controversy, you would have no idea that editors, cartoonists and all “blasphemers” had been threatened with grisly death by extremist Muslims from London to Karachi. Or that so-called “moderate” forces had called for the prosecution and punishment of those who offend their religious views.
“Music at the tonal crossroads”
On an impulse, the day before a major blizzard, I bought a ticket to hear the great soprano Dawn Upshaw and the pianist Richard Goode at Zankel Hall (classical/jazz/world music venue underneath Carnegie Hall). The program was ingenious: First Goode played three “Prelude and Fugue”s from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, including the stunning C# minor from Book I; then the
The right to blasphemy
As Bill Weinberg has done at World War 4 Report, I am publishing the following statement in its entirety. I am not in full agreement, but I think Mahmood Ketabchi’s voice needs to be heard. — Sent by Mahmood Ketabchi, an exiled follower of the Worker Communist Party of Iran now living in New Jersey and active in support work
J Dilla
Oh my. Just got an email about the death of J Dilla (a.k.a. Jay Dee), one of the world’s great hip-hop producers. I mentioned him and even linked to a sound clip in this article I did for Slate. At this point I know nothing about the cause of death. He had to have been really young. From a March
Unacceptable
Since I cited Andrew Sullivan in my last post, now I need to cry foul. Here he quotes a reader email as follows: “I’m honestly starting to suspect that, before this is over, European nations are going to have exactly four choices in dealing with their entire Moslem populations — for elementary safety’s sake: (1) Capitulate totally to them and
The Egyptian wrinkle
One more comment, from Andrew Sullivan, and then it’s time to move on from this cartoon business: So we now discover that the hideously offensive and blasphemous cartoons – so blasphemous that CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, won’t publish them … were reprinted last October. In Egypt. On the front frigging page. No one rioted. No
Enraged?
Reza Aslan writes in Slate that he’s “enraged” by the Danish cartoons. “No one doubts that the press should be free to satirize,” he says. (Actually, plenty of people seem to doubt it.) “But freedom of the press cannot excuse the promotion of noxious stereotypes,” he continues. That’s a fair point, but the printing of cartoons also cannot excuse thuggish
Johann Hari nails it
…The image of Mohammed’s turban containing a bomb implies that all Muslims are violent maniacs – an untrue and dangerous nonsense. But free speech is not the freedom to be nice. It is the freedom to be offensive, foolish or even racist, or it is nothing. Yet many of my friends and political allies were not reacting by stating these