Sometimes I wish I had started a blog earlier. There's lots of earlier events in my life and the world that I would have liked to have had an outlet to comment on. But there's no need to worry about that: since history repeats itself, I just have to wait a bit and something similar will happen. Then I can say whatever I wished I had a chance to say the first time. Have something I should have got off my chest when people were rioting over those Danish Cartoons? No problem: now there are protests in several Arab countries about this low budget movie that insults Islam.
What Were They Thinking?
First up, I'm wondering what - if anything - is the thinking behind protests targeting anything and everything American. I'm fairness, there have been some protesters which distinguish between anger at the movie and anger at the U.S.A. But there's also a lot scatter-shot blame as though this movie is associated with all Americans. As if Americans all got together during one of their national meetings, and decide to make a movie insulting Mohammed. "Shall we use the Hollywood marketing machine to distribute our anti-Islam propaganda all over the world?" "No my Zionist friend, just put a badly-edited trailer on YouTube.
Can it Get Any Worse?
With the cartoon protests, it was a shame how the issues got dumbed down the longer they went. The fact is, the cartoons weren't really satirical, they were just thinly-veiled insults. So the protesters did have a right to be angry. Not burn-the-city-down angry, but a little angry. As time when on though, the entire issue got hijacked by the most conservative, and it went from "how dare you insult our religion" to "how dare you depict Mohammed." A genuine debate over the limits of satire vs. tolerance became a naive attempt to impose one group's morals on the whole planet. The Islamic world looks misguided: someone depicts your greatest prophet as a terrorist, and your biggest complaint is the fact that they made a picture of him. And the cartoonists - who, let's remember, are attention-seeking bullies - get elevated to international heroes of free speech.
Let Down Again
I was quite surprised by how much of the media just ran with the basic story "Arabs rioted in reaction to an American movie that insulted Mohammed" without answering the obvious question: "Wait, what movie?" Now finally, people are digging in to the increasingly bizarre story of this "Sam Bacile" person behind the movie. In a sense, this story is a great demonstration of what's wrong with modern news: A story that on the surface is straightforward, even boring, but intriguing after a little investigative reporting. I'm also disappointed that the similarity to the word "imbecile" was pointed out to me on Twitter, rather than the news.
What Were They Thinking?
First up, I'm wondering what - if anything - is the thinking behind protests targeting anything and everything American. I'm fairness, there have been some protesters which distinguish between anger at the movie and anger at the U.S.A. But there's also a lot scatter-shot blame as though this movie is associated with all Americans. As if Americans all got together during one of their national meetings, and decide to make a movie insulting Mohammed. "Shall we use the Hollywood marketing machine to distribute our anti-Islam propaganda all over the world?" "No my Zionist friend, just put a badly-edited trailer on YouTube.
Can it Get Any Worse?
With the cartoon protests, it was a shame how the issues got dumbed down the longer they went. The fact is, the cartoons weren't really satirical, they were just thinly-veiled insults. So the protesters did have a right to be angry. Not burn-the-city-down angry, but a little angry. As time when on though, the entire issue got hijacked by the most conservative, and it went from "how dare you insult our religion" to "how dare you depict Mohammed." A genuine debate over the limits of satire vs. tolerance became a naive attempt to impose one group's morals on the whole planet. The Islamic world looks misguided: someone depicts your greatest prophet as a terrorist, and your biggest complaint is the fact that they made a picture of him. And the cartoonists - who, let's remember, are attention-seeking bullies - get elevated to international heroes of free speech.
Let Down Again
I was quite surprised by how much of the media just ran with the basic story "Arabs rioted in reaction to an American movie that insulted Mohammed" without answering the obvious question: "Wait, what movie?" Now finally, people are digging in to the increasingly bizarre story of this "Sam Bacile" person behind the movie. In a sense, this story is a great demonstration of what's wrong with modern news: A story that on the surface is straightforward, even boring, but intriguing after a little investigative reporting. I'm also disappointed that the similarity to the word "imbecile" was pointed out to me on Twitter, rather than the news.
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