I rarely if ever look at Time Magazine, my old employer, but a friend forwarded this choice bit of relativist nonsense from time.com, and it’s imperative to share. Headlined “Firebombed French Paper is No Free Speech Martyr” (gotta love the use of the dogwhistle word “martyr”), Bruce Crumley writes:
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren’t going to tell “us” what can and can’t be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?
The difficulty in answering that question is also what’s making it hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists (and offend average Muslims) with articles and “funny” cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed—depictions forbidden in Islam to boot. Predictably, the strike unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians, many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as “an attack on democracy by its enemies.”
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there’s no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring.
Hard to know where to begin Fisking this one, so I’ll leave that to the commenters.
Good lord!
Imagine that line of thinking -- "there's no justification for firebombing an abortion clinic, but was it worth putting it next to a church?"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd abortion is forbidden in Catholicism "to boot"!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTime and Newsweek are rapidly becoming more and more people's old employer, because they print twaddle like this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?"
"The difficulty in answering that question is also what’s making it hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning" ...
This clown doth flatter himself too much. What difficulty does a logical thinker have in answering that question?
For starters, it's worth drawing sociopathic leftists out from under the mast heads behind which they hide their disdain for the underpinnings of the Enlightenment and all of what modern Western civilization stands for.
Next, it helps to illustrate just who it is who wants to destroy that civilization, why they want it destroyed, and how they think about its destruction. Better to know our enemies.
And lastly, better to witness the same-no-sex eunuch marriage of those two groups, instead of fooling ourselves that western leftists are divorced in mind from Islamists.
One group -- leftists -- cannot stomach western society, as their self-loathing runs to their very core. The other group -- Islamists -- despise the utter misery and mayhem of their own culture so much that they have no toleration to witness others criticize it.
They are wed at their empty sacks. A match made perfectly in hell.
To both, I quote CAPTCHA: "Know More. Get Better."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"One group -- leftists -- cannot stomach western society, as their self-loathing runs to their very core. The other group -- Islamists -- despise the utter misery and mayhem of their own culture so much that they have no toleration to witness others criticize it.
They are wed at their empty sacks. A match made perfectly in hell."
QFT. For liberals, self-loathing is a perversely satisfying way to pay penance for living the fabulous lives they do. For Muslim fundamentalists, it's a very deep and abiding part of self. Mix the two and you get an unending fusillade of rockets and firebombs. Aren't we all lucky?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStockholm Syndrome-- Crumley has already surrendered to the Jihadis. The surrender is all the more poignant because this happened in France.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs Ace of Spades has pointed out, the URL suggests an earlier headline, wondering whether the publisher was a victim of its own "Islamaphobia."
That term's repellant, at least how it's used. It seems to me the ones who truly fear Islam are the ones who go out of their way not to offend its adherents, for fear of violent retribution.
The Time writer is worthless, having already internalized dhimmitude and the psychology of a victim of abuse.
He's not only useless as a defender of the freedoms he so enjoys (and abuses), he's also useless as a writer, oblivious to all irony.
Publisher plans to write offensive things, and thugs firebomb his office. This poor excuse for a man invokes the word "destructive" to describe, not the firebombing, but the newspaper!
Idiotic, divisive, destructive, petulant, futile, childish, stupid, totally unnecessary, offensive, shameful.
NONE OF THESE WORDS are applied to the thugs, they're all applied to the publisher and his "antics."
"Futile"? The terms implies an inevitability, but of what, exactly?
And "totally unnecessary"? A person who understands and values free speech knows that, if speech provokes intimidating violence, then standing up to that violence PRECISELY by crossing that taboo is entirely justified and even necessary to ensure free speech.
Just today, Mark Steyn highlighted his obit of Oriana Fallaci, who had precisely the right response -- and tone -- to those who squelch speech.
"You go [do something anatomically impossible with] yourself. I say what I want."
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf we were better people, we would have the courage to pray that Dhimmi publications be firebombed by patriotic, justice-loving Americans. That way the jihadists and sympathizers could not cower behind cowardice, disguising their anti-free-speech, terrorist sympathies as fear of reprisal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?"
Has he asked this of OWS?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"depictions forbidden in Islam to boot."
"to boot"? Really? TO BOOT?
He thinks the fact something is forbidden in Islam is relevant at all?
Imagine if those who kept kosher firebombed all the sausage factories. "It's forbidden in the Books of Moses, to boot!" (Well, the sausage, specifically, leaving aside the 1st Commandment.)
Imagine if leftists firebombed conservative political offices. "They're forbidden in communist nations, to boot!"
Imagine if expat Americans living in the Middle East firebombed mosques. "They're forbidden NOWHERE, to boot!"
The saddest thing of all is that the people in charge of Time magazine are proud of themselves for publishing that kind of dangerous clap-trap
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrom what I've read, such depictions are not forbidden by Islam. They are forbidden by certain cultures attached to Islam.
Go back several hundred years, and there are multiple examples of such depictions in Muslim texts and art.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps Time should insist that their writers possess an IQ that is numerically larger than their shoe size.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn other words, people who mock Islam can be attacked on the "he wanted killin'" defense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseChristians are regularly ridiculed and mocked in the US and European popular cultures, even in the pages of Time Magazine. I've never seen a secular media figure, let alone Time writer, describe blasphemy in the Christian sense using terminology like 'offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody'. Not that I ever expected them to, but its then strange to see secular media figures acting as stalwart defenders of muslims.
Mind you, I am no fan of Islam, but I would never want to gratuitously insult Muslims in the way this Charlie Hedbo magazine did. Thats not right, but its no justification for throwing a Molotov cocktail, as the Time guy implies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, Crumley, we all know the stupid girl had it coming to her. She should have never worn that tight little red dress; what's a randy, rage-filled sociopath supposed to do seeing something like that? Leave her alone? I don't think so.
Whenever I come across a few-odd sentences strung together by Time (which doesn't happen often and absolutely never happens on purpose), I'm always amazed at the magazine's mocking disdain of the United States, its allies, its core beliefs, its fundamental values. This essay by Crumley, however, is just about the most disgusting mass of intellectual sewage I've ever read.
As a journalist, Crumley should take it personally when terrorists fire-bomb a newspaper for something it published. Nobody outside of France has more right to be horrified at this than Crumley, Time, and anyone else who makes a living by giving news, views, and opinions to others. Instead of recognizing the terrorist attack for the horror it was, Crumley sides with the terrorists and blames the paper for being Islamophobic. Good grief Man, blame bin Laden and Al Queda for global Islamophobia. If Time is even so much as vandalized for publishing Crumley's insipid essay, Crumley's not going to say his essay was "openly begging for very violent responses."
French politicians are perfectly right to condemn the attack and I'd think even less of them if they didn't. Crumley is correct that "there’s no justification of such an illegitimate response." If he truly cared about the common good served by creating division and anger, he wouldn't work for Time magazine. Good luck finding a Time article condemning any of the recent attacks or Jesus Christ and the Christian church.
Like all Liberals, Crumley indulges in hypocrisy, pretense, and double-standards to nearly fetishistic levels.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExactly!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“Firebombed French Paper is No Free Speech Martyr”
Actually, the publishers are just exactly that. Having just been hacked, firebombed, and further threatened, they are looking the bestids right in the eye and publishing their cartoons anyway. A rare bit of courage, indeed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBruce Crumley just scored the front row in Dhimmi Class. His momma must be so proud,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLOL!!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo he'd be okay with Christians in America firebombing pr0n theaters and museums then?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse