Comments on A Few Cultural Learnings

"...pick & choose approach to outrage..."

What, like The Stranger's picking and choosing?

Picking: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=74787

Choosing:
http://www.thestranger.com/blog/2006/10/scandal_43rd_distric.php

"...pick & choose approach to outrage..."

Just like the Stranger's picking (the craigslist 'experiment') and choosing (Hugh Foskett's facebook)?

Josh, you should make sure Eli Sanders and Dan Savage read this post. A little journalistic integrity might rub off on them.

Several problems here:

Calling the ADL's statement a "denunciation" is a blatant mischaracterization of the actual content. Slow-witted, perhaps. Certainly hypersensitive. But it doesn't denounce the film or its contents.

Beinert has a history of telling me to be afeard of stuff, so I had to check his story. Turns out the Deutsch Oper is considering rescheduling the program with appropriate security measures taken in a couple months.

Also, the bit about the hero laughing at the severed head of Muhammad wasn't in the Mozart original. It was added recently. That doesn't have much bearing on the nature of the complaint, but someone should check the author, lest people get all riled up about "censoring Mozart."

Beinert and his ilk want me to be scared of the same threats they perceive. I suppose it's only natural they should think me deficient when I fail to run to their cause in fear. Whatever.

I think lefties have a hard time reconciling their strong belief in freedom of speech with their dislike of insulting people (especially minorities).

@Boyd: I could totally see your point, but I was under the impression that Facebook pages were open and accessible to the general public (ie, anyone can be a facebook member and anyone can access another member's page). If I'm wrong (ie, a password was needed to access his page), then I'd agree with you. Otherwise, there's a big difference in publicly displaying info. and transmitting info. under the assumption it would be privately viewed by one other.

Summerlin,
you sound like, well, just as Feit said it: like you're one of those lefties who's bending over backwards.

Are you serious? This is a big issue? See, here's the thing. Last time I looked, Germany isn't in America. Liberal blogs tend to be focused on, you know, American politics.

To draw a more direct analogy, if Idomeneo was shut down in America because it might offend Muslims...I bet you'd see some outrage on the left, because it's moronic. Or not, who knows? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

On the other hand, private concerns have the right to censor whatever the hell they want. I'm not sure why that's confusing to the right, left, TNR, or anyone else.

Please spare me the deference to the righty blogosphere's "defense" of free speech. They pick and choose their outrage just as much as anyone. Seriously, Josh, sometimes it's like you take one too many bong hits before wobbling down to the office.

one of those lefties who's bending over backwards

Perhaps you're one of those readers whose opinions are influenced by echo chamber journalism.

Josh:

Are you saying you were opposed to Charles Mudede's call to cancel Buju Banton's show at Neumoe's?

If so, why didn't you speak up at the time?

i saw the borat movie in l.a. a couple of weeks ago, at one of the two west coast screenings that were held. it was chaos. people started lining up at 11am for the 10pm screening.

there are, as to be expected, a million jew jokes. anyone who knows cohen's work knows that jew jokes are his schtick. is anti-semitism from a jew ok? i dunno. all i know is that the audience nearly died when borat explained his reason for driving across country, rather than flying:

it is not safe to fly. the jews may stage a repeat of their 9/11 attacks.

overall, i thought the movie was ok. but, i don't like going to the cinema. there are some amazingly uncomfortable unscripted parts, which is cohen's strong suit. the story line is weak but that's to be expected.

i just hope the wrestling scene makes it to the final cut, unadulterated. i won't give anything away but will say this: i've never seen a film that featured a man's nut sack on the chin of another man that wasn't a porno.

RobotSlave,

Yes.

I was out of town in D.C., not paying attention to much but my Cantwell assignment when that whole thing blew up. To be honest: I didn't even know Mudede called for a boycott.

Neumo's can book whatever act it wants. Had people shown up to protest that guy's act, I think that would have been cool.

fair and balanced means pretending the left has as much power in this country as the right. it doesn't. and it never has. these complaints about political correctness are so tired, so exaggerated, so totally beside the point.

WF,

What does sympathizing with (or tolerating) radical Muslim calls for censorship have to do with overcoming the Left's lack of power in this country?

Zero.

The Left is supposed to be against censorship. So, wouldn't all Lefty calls against censorship help restore the Left?

Case in point—the Muslims who call for censorship are totally totally totally right wing.

kerri--

balls on chin: definitely in the final cut.

why don't you like going to movies?

hello, I am a professor of Muslim studies and have shocking news. I have recently come across a rare scroll that has some shocking imagery indeed. It clearly shows the prophet mohammed having intercourse with his camel. I am releasing it to the BBC soon. So the beheading of the prophet will be small potatoes compared to this new image that I am releasing.

Joshua Aloysius Feit!!! The LEAST you can do is read this:

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/10/post_1595.html#013864

Peter Beinhart is from the Alan Colmes wing of the Democratic Party.

Josh:

I'm sure it seems like a nitpick, but Mudede didn't just call for a boycott, he called for cancellation of the show. A boycott wouldn't have bothered me and other free-speech advocates at all; it was the idea of shutting the artist down entirely that rankled.

And a big part of the problem in that controversy was that Charles wrote in SLOG as if he were speaking for The Stranger, and though various staffers later insisted that Mudede was merely expressing his own opinion, nobody on the paper's staff spoke out against cancelling the show, either.

In fact, as far as I'm aware, you're the first staffer to go on record as opposing cancellation of the show.

The Prospect piece linked to above makes a couple good points. First, it's a cheap tactic to argue that a lack of commentary or a lack of outrage on a particular issue means that bloggers must feel a particular way about it. This is a common but much-derided habit of certain bloggers who want to take a cheap shot.

Second, the cancellation of the opera isn't a clear censorship case. I happen to think that it's ridiculous that they were so eager not to offend that they cancelled it, but that is a different issue: what lengths should we go to in our attempts to be culturally sensitive? It's an important discussion, but this case is different than, for example, Tony Judt being denied the chance to air his views. Again, I think that there is a ridiculous amount of self-censorship at play in peoples' attempt to appease reactionaries, but it's a different issue.

And it's true that many conservatives jump on these issues because they can mix anti-Muslim sentiment in with their analyses.

Thinking back to the Danish cartoon brouhaha, I remember that people like Andrew Sullivan, a writer whom I generally admire very much, kept accusing publications such as the NYT of not believing in free speech because they decided not to publish the cartoons. Huh? That's saying "if you don't publish what I want and don't say what I want you to say, then you don't believe in free speech." Presumably he'll now demand that every American theatre perform this opera.

right wing chic is bashing "the left" for being pc.

simplistic shit about the left being against censorship in all cases ignores that there's been a long conversation that's gone on in both post-WWII Europe and post-civil rights movement US about hate speech and hate crimes. i see rethinking these ideas in relation to new immigrant communities as a healthy and transitional process.

these controversies are politicized mainly by right wing assholes looking for another way to make it seem like we're in a clash of civilizations. they'd have you believe that the new culture wars are in the middle east, when really, the biggest problems in the middle east are the US occupations, its collaboration with dictators and torturers, and its support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine-- all in the name of spreading or safeguarding western freedoms.

Dutch newspaper's publication of editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammed

Why am I not surprised that TNR's editors can't tell the difference between the Dutch and the Danes.

Peter Beinhart is from the Alan Colmes wing of the Democratic Party.

Aren't virtually all of TNR's writers?

Also, the bit about the hero laughing at the severed head of Muhammad wasn't in the Mozart original. It was added recently.

It's worse than that. Muhammed's decapitated head isn't in the original, period. The opera is set in ancient Greece/Troy, a little too early for Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. Fucking pretentious Germans.

Josh is 100% right. There is no call of "bullshit" from the left when Muslim groups demand censorship or play the religion card while if Jewish or Christian groups do the same the left gets indignant immediately. Also the double standards between the freedom of the Islamic political/religious/media, whether in the Islamic world or the west, to offend is as stringently matched by their demand no one have the right to offend them. If this were coming from Israel and their supporters the left would be the first to say this hypocrasy is not acceptable.

Robot Slave,

Right you are.

And it's true that many conservatives jump on these issues because they can mix anti-Muslim sentiment in with their analyses.

by Gabriel

Gabriel, it also true that many leftists jump on certain issues because they can mix anti-Jewish or anti-Christian sentiment in with their analyses.

All those people against hypocrisy in calls for freedom of speech: time for you to campaign for the decriminalization of cross burning in the us, the legalization of nazi parties in europe, etc. This is the top issue of the day, trumps all others, shows the insidious influence of the left on our body politic, stands in the way of the Democratic Party taking back the Senate. Get on it!

Aloysius? for real?