Where’s Evil?

This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country—the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.

He didn’t have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.

-Rick Santorum

 

“I’m not your destiny, or the Devil, either!” I said. “Look at you! Came to kill evil with your bare hands, and now away you go with no more glory than a man sideswiped by a Greyhound bus! And that’s all the glory you deserve!” I said. “That’s all that any man at war with pure evil deserves.

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,” I said, “but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

“It’s that part of an imbecile, ” I said, “that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

Shigeru Miyamoto Never Said That Games Were Art, AP Says

Have we settled that video games are art yet? Of course we have! The National Endowment for the Arts now recognizes games as a medium worthy of their funding, the Smithsonian’s Art of Video Games exhibition is a go, and Roger Ebert has retreated to his skull fortress on Film Critic Mountain. Case closed! Game, set, and—wait, Shigeru Miyamoto said what now?

Here’s what happened: The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded Miyamoto a fellowship, and after accepting it, the creator of Mario and Zelda and Kirby and Pokémon and Pikmin remarked to the Associated Press that he “never said video games [are] an art.” In that post-show interview, he said that he was humbled to receive a fellowship that Alfred Hitchcock had once received, and according to the Associated Press, he then “batted away suggestions that his work was in the same category as a classic film.”

Now, that last quote belongs to the AP, not to Miyamoto himself. And it’s worth mentioning that none of this art talk was part of Miyamoto’s actual acceptance speech, which was more about his creative process and his history with Nintendo. “I’m receiving the award together with everyone who has worked with me in the past 30 years,” he said, “and I’d like to thank each one of those people for their hard work.”

Here is a man who is way too busy making art to bother defining it.

And really, his comments to the AP might say more about the man than the medium. Overwhelming humility is Miyamoto-san’s calling card: “I cannot create games alone… I am rather embarrassed to receive such an award as a personal award,” he said during his acceptance speech. That kind of modesty seems to be a respectful, unpretentious man’s counter-weight to his own considerable status, not a comment on the aesthetic value of games as such. After all, in that same speech, Miyamoto says that Donkey Kong was “one of the first games created by artists and game designers” rather than “engineers.”

So sure, Miyamoto never said that video games are an art. But he did say that we should celebrate the role that games play “both in entertainment and in culture.” And he did refer to his colleges at Nintendo as “artists.” Besides which, he did devote 30 years of his life to game design, which he calls his dream job.  So are games art? It’s tempting to put Miyamoto down for a no on that question, but it’s more like his answer is that he’s too busy making games (and also, too damn humble) to care.

Tracy Morgan Is Not the Point

Let’s be clear about something: Tracy Morgan’s “choice of words” is not the issue, and what is “in [his] heart” is none of my concern. What is in the guy’s heart does not matter to me, and unless you know him personally, it should not matter to you.

What matters is that the actual ideas he was expressing–that gay children’s sexuality should be met with condemnation or even violence, and that the victims of bullying deserve to be bullied because they are not “tough” enough–these are things that people actually do think.

Some people do spurn or disown their gay kids, and some gay kids do become the victims of violence, and some parents of gay kids do turn a blind eye to that violence, or even participate in it. All of these things happen. It matters that these things happen.

It does not matter what is in Tracy Morgan’s heart. It does not matter whether he really meant the hateful things he said. What matters is that he said them, and that he seemed to mean them to everyone listening. As Kurt Vonnegut would have it, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

It does matter that Tracy Morgan is seeking to make amends. But this shouldn’t be about him, or about whether his fans have polite society’s permission to remain his fans. This should be about the things that he said, which at the time he seemed to mean, and which some people do actually think, even if Tracy Morgan does not happen to be one of those people.

We tend to let teachable moments such as this one pass us by. We tend to insist on apologies that–heartfelt or not–do very little to address the larger issues at work, and then we tend to ask, did this famous guy apologize well enough? And if he did, by some measure or another, then we tend to move on. And so nothing all that useful generally happens.

Nothing useful happened when Michael Richards said a bunch of racist crap at The Comedy Store, for example. And so far, nothing useful has happened as a result of The Great Tracy Morgan Kerfuffle.

And for that matter: Nothing useful happened when Chris Brown beat his girlfriend to within an inch of her life. Nothing useful happened when Michael Vick tortured and killed dogs for fun and profit. We didn’t have a serious discussion about domestic abuse, or about animal abuse, or about the corrosive nature of celebrity.

What we need right now is a serious discussion about gay rights, and about the prejudice and indifference and cruelty holding gay rights back. What we need is to say that, yes, Tracy Morgan should be ashamed of the things he said–but that far more importantly, everyone who really thinks those things should be ashamed. Everyone who thinks those things is wrong. The people in question, whether or not they are celebrities, should stop thinking those inhumane, immoral, shameful things. That’s the point.

If we allow this to be entirely about Tracy Morgan, then we’ve seriously missed the point. Again.

We’re Not Objective

If you’re not sure what The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was about, this is what it was about:

No, not the bit about turtles--though for the record, I agree.

There seems to have been some confusion as to whether Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the rest of the Daily Show folks are subtly saying that we should all vote Democrat, or very clearly saying exactly what the fuck they’re saying–namely, that our country is not on the brink of devolving into a socialist/fascist/communist/theocratic dystopia, and that our news media spend about 99% of their time callously exploiting (and creating) people’s fears, rather than trying to keep the political process honest. That’s not a partisan position. It’s just reasonable.

Which is not to say that Jon Stewart has no political ideology. Everyone has opinions, and everyone is biased. If our news organizations would stop worrying about appearing objective, and instead use that energy to be intelligent and accurate, then perhaps they could do some worthwhile work.

Look at it this way: If NPR really were an objective news organization–and they clearly think that they are, since they banned their employees from attending the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, lest they should appear biased–then Juan Williams’ opinions about Muslims (or anything else) would not be grounds for termination. As long as Williams did his job well–as long as he did objective reporting–his opinions would not matter in the least, right? Or are we are arguing that a good journalist must have no personal biases? Because in that case, there has never been, nor will there ever be, such a thing as a good journalist.

The whole idea of objective reporting is misleading. Having an opinion is not bad reporting. Having an unsupported opinion is bad reporting, just as unsupported facts are not factual. We have replaced the burden of proof (which supports honest argument) with a pretense to objectivity (which fosters dishonesty, demagoguery, and equivocation).

Hence all this idiotic hang-wringing about Jon Stewart’s ideological position. NPR asks, “Is it a political rally? Is it comedy?” It’s both. That’s how satire works. Case closed.

To ask whether the rally supports or opposes Obama–or the Tea Party, or Glenn Beck, or whoever one thinks it supports or opposes–is to miss the point entirely. The rally did not espouse a party affiliation, nor did it aspire to milquetoast opinionlessness. The point was specifically to show that an awful lot of people would like to be addressed as rational adults rather than frightened, malleable, exceptionally stupid children.

When most of the people with platforms purport to have no opinions, only the most extreme and incendiary caricatures of political thought (the very loudest opinions) get any airtime. When everyone is allowed to have an opinion, but is also required to support it, then we can have a variety of viewpoints and a substantive debate between them.

Jon Stewart isn’t trying to tell you how to vote tomorrow. He’s just reminding you that, when voters can recognize bullshit, Democracy is much healthier. So here’s my small contribution to that noble goal: Whenever a news organization claims to be objective, that news organization is lying to you, or else to themselves. Yes, any news organization. Yes, that includes the one that you personally like and/or with whom you personally agree. It can be surprisingly hard to inform oneself, but we can start by contumaciously ignoring sources of deliberate misinformation and self-congratulatory, intellectually dishonest pseudo-objectivity.

Your Opponent Is Not Your Enemy

Bill Maher frustrates the hell out of me. He’s clearly smart, he’s often funny, and his show allows other smart and/or funny people the opportunity to have lengthy discussions about important things. But he’s also infinitely smug, and Real Time–when it isn’t hosting some of the best political discussions on television–takes far too many detours into lazy, self-satisfied, Jay Leno-style late night pablum. That kind of bad writing reduces the overall quality of the show considerably, but it doesn’t necessarily contradict or weaken the substantive discussion for which I tune in.

This kind of crap does, though: “When it comes to voting,” Maher said on October 1, “you’ve got to grow up and realize that there’s a difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy.” In this analogy, Democrats are the “disappointing friend,” and Republicans are the “deadly enemy.”

Maher’s statement struck me as inflammatory partisan bullshit, probably because it is, in fact, inflammatory partisan bullshit. But to be fair, I heard Bill Maher say that only a few hours after hearing Jon Stewart say that we really, really need be wary of precisely that sort of idiocy.

There’s a difference between disagreeing with people–like newscasters on Fox News that I think are incorrect in their analysis of the day’s events–and people that threaten to kill you for putting a cartoon image of Mohammad in a bear suit. And that’s a line that we too often forget.

Our system genuinely allows for peaceable exchanges of power, Stewart reminds us on NPR’s Fresh Air. Even if [INSERT POLITICIAN YOU REALLY DON'T LIKE] comes to power,

we’ll be fine. You know, we had a Civil War. Just–we’re not that fragile. And I think we always have to remember that people can be opponents, but not enemies. And there are enemies in the world. We just need the news media to help us delineate, and I think that’s where the failing is: That the culture of corruption that exists in the media doesn’t allow us to delineate between enemies and opponents, and that’s where we sort of fall into trouble.

Or to put it as succinctly as possible: Al-Qaeda is my enemy, and Glenn Beck is my opponent, and seriously, there’s a difference.

And it’s a very real difference, and obscuring it is an historically situated political strategy that, according to Rick Perlstein, Richard Nixon helped to pioneer between 1966 and 1972. It is not an inevitable consequence of human nature, or of the political process, but rather a matter of “using the angers, anxieties, and resentments” of the day to unite voters against a common, essentially imagined enemy.

When Republicans suffered humiliating defeats in 1970, Nixon blamed the chicanery of his enemies: America’s enemies, as he had come to think of them. He grew yet more determined to destroy them, because of what he was convinced was their determination to destroy him.

Millions of Americans recognized the balance of forces in the exact same way–that America was engulfed in a pitched battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. The only thing was: Americans disagreed radically over which side was which.

Rick Perlstein, Nixonland (Scribner, 2009): xii.

The imagined conflict between the forces of light and those of darkness (with light defined as whatever I think, and darkness defined as whatever I don’t) has come to dominate the American political landscape, to the extreme detriment of the nation’s public discourse. We actually forget that someone who wants to kill us belongs to a different category than someone with whom we disagree about the role of government in regulating commerce.

And I get it: A world composed entirely of absolutes would be much easier to sort out than our own messy, complicated one. But we have a responsibility to live in the real world, because we’re adults, and growing up isn’t about realizing “that there’s a difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy,” as Bill Maher said the other night. Growing up is about realizing that the person with whom you disagree is not necessarily an enemy, let alone a deadly one.

There really are deadly enemies in the world, and we’ll be in no position to confront them if we waste all of our time and energy squabbling with one another along cynically delineated partisan lines.

Come to Think of It, I Don’t Particularly Want to Play on Roger Ebert’s Lawn

I respect Roger Ebert for admitting that his argument about video games was profoundly stupid. There are two major reasons why Ebert’s original argument was invalid. He now freely admits the first and most important one–namely, that he was discussing a medium about which he knew next-to-nothing. “I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen,” he says. Amen.

His ignorance of the medium leads him to some truly bizarre conclusions. For example, consider this excerpt from his faux-debate with Clive Barker (who, incidentally, is an expert on video games like a a grizzly bear is an expert on veganism):

Barker: “Let’s invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art.”

Ebert: “If you can go through ‘every emotional journey available,’ doesn’t that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?”

The bit about doing Romeo and Juliet naked and upside down–simply put, that is not what games do. It’s more like what movies sometimes do. Interactivity does not allow the player to do whatever he wants. It allows the player to act in a very limited number of ways, within a closed system that is designed to lead him to a certain preconceived conclusion. Sometimes player-action is really no more based in choice than the act of turning a book’s pages: You can either turn the page and see what’s next, or you can put down the book and do something else.

Think of it this way: If you could do anything you wanted in Grand Theft Auto, then the ability to kill prostitutes would not be an ethical issue. Sure, you could kill prostitutes, but you could also drive them to the nearest community college and enroll them at your own expense, and on the way over, you could have a frank discussion with them about class privilege, gender inequality, and safe sex. You cannot discourse with prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto, but you can kill them. The ethical problem in Grand Theft Auto is not that you can do anything, and that given that freedom, lots of people choose to kill prostitutes. The problem is that you can do relatively few things, and one of those few things that you can choose to do is kill prostitutes. The option is there because the designers put it there, and the alternative is absent because the designers didn’t put it there.

Even when games have branching narratives (and many do not), there are rarely more than two or three possible paths. And even the hundred-or-so important decisions in the Mass Effect games do not constitute anything approaching free choice. The experience still has an author.

To use Ebert’s own example, Braid:

You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game.

If he had played the game, which of course he has not, Ebert would know that Braid is specifically about the impossibility of taking back our mistakes. As the game builds toward its famous final level, time manipulation ceases to be an amusing superpower and becomes instead a tragic distortion of perspective: What if you thought, mistakenly, that you could bend the laws of nature to your will? What sorts of mistakes might you make as a result? You would probably make some pretty horrible ones, as the game intends to show you through an interactive–but fundamentally linear–narrative.

Similarly, what if you thought that video games were a space wherein you could do whatever you want, without limitation or consequence? What important things might you miss? You would probably miss the point entirely, as Barker and Ebert both do.

Reason Number Two:

My error in the first place was to think I could make a convincing argument on purely theoretical grounds. What I was saying is that video games could not in principle be Art.

If you have to reject something on “purely theoretical grounds,” even when that conclusion runs contrary to observation or common sense, then you’re either (a) working with a bad theory, or (b) being a sophist. The point of theory is to systematically explain real objects and actual experiences, not to trap us in snooty technicalities.

A simple example: Around the turn of the 20th Century, the general consensus was that photography and filming were technical operations rather than creative pursuits, and that photographs and films therefore did not count as art. Eventually, that theory was revised–specifically because people began to understand the medium, and the skill required to work in it, and the many subjective choices it involves–and it suddenly seemed silly and pointless to exclude photography and film from aesthetic discourse. The problem was the theory, not the thing being theorized.

“I concluded without a definition [of art] that satisfied me,” Ebert says, ending this discussion about what art is the only way that any discussion about what art is ever ends.

Do You Support the Homosexual Agenda, Whatever the Fuck That Is?

A few weeks ago, I received a mass email from Eugene Delgaudio, who is apparently the president of some very important organization or something. “Dear fellow American,” Delgaudio began,

The Radical Homosexuals claim you and other pro-family Americans actually now support same-sex marriage, special job preferences for homosexuals and promotion of the homosexual lifestyle in schools.

Is it true? What do you say?

As one might guess, these lines serve as a the preamble to a tirade against Radical Homosexuals, The Homosexual Lobby, and Leftist Thought Control. And as one might also guess, all of these frightening terms go tantalizingly undefined throughout the proceedings, as does their comforting, besieged antithesis, Pro-Family values.

Putting aside that spooky, enigmatic language, the argument at hand seems to be that an organized cadre of gay people, relying on the indulgence of an increasingly secular United States, wants to (1) create anti-discrimination laws (possibly modeled after Affirmative Action) for gay employees and job applicants, (2) secure marriage and adoption rights for gay couples nationwide, and (3) include gay sex in public schools’ sexual education programs. As one might assume, these nefarious goals threaten to undermine Pro-Family values, or something.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I disagree strongly with the idea that gay marriage somehow undermines traditional marriage, or that gay adoption is somehow bad for children. There is very little reliable, empirical evidence to suggest (much less prove) the innate superiority of heterosexual coupling when it comes to raising children, and there is in fact some recent and well-publicized evidence to the contrary.

Further, the whole idea of “teaching gay sex” is a bit confusing. We can reasonably and usefully say that vaginal intercourse (of the sort that involves a penis rather than a sex toy) is a straight sex-act, insofar as gay couples are physically incapable of performing it. There are, however, no gay sex-acts–no sex-acts that only gay couples can perform, or that are intrinsically different when performed by gay couples (or by dozens of people at once, for that matter). There is no significant physiological difference, for example, between a man performing oral sex on a man, and a woman performing oral sex on a man. If children and adolescents are to understand the mechanics of sex, then they will inevitably have to understand that, with one notable exception, no sex-act is inherently any gayer than any other.

And as for affirmative action, I would argue that discriminatory hiring practices are bad, and that frivolous lawsuits are also bad, and that we need to work to eliminate both. None of which has the slightest thing to do with family values, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.

All of that being said, I’m not going to brush off the so-called Pro-Family values argument just because it feels a tad antique and silly. Immediately dismissing something because it’s traditional is exactly as absurd as immediately accepting something because it’s traditional. I’m not interested in doing away with the wisdom of previous generations, any more than I’m interested in assuming that everything previous generations thought or did was wise. (The Sermon on the Mount? Exceptionally wise. The Children’s Crusade? Surreally unwise).

So, what is the actual argument against gay marriage, and so on?

I’m sure you’ve been wondering just what the American Morality Survey contains. In short, the American Morality Survey is a perfect example of why polls are, generally speaking, bullshit–and further, of how concepts like family and morality can become buzz-words, devoid of descriptive and ethical content. It is a Rosetta Stone of disingenuous, fear-mongering misinformation. It is an immensely instructive object lesson in the mass production of useless data, and wherever one stands on the issue of gay rights, one has a vested interest in recognizing this sort of demagoguery when one sees it.

Here are the poll’s five questions, with some comments on each. Keep in mind that, on the survey form, “No” is selected by default for each of these.

1. Should homosexuals receive special job rights and force businesses, schools, churches and even daycares to hire and advance homosexuals or face prosecution and multimillion-dollar lawsuits?

As I have said earlier, the goal of Affirmative Action is to eliminate discrimination, not to promote it. If the latter happens, then the specific policy in question has failed, but that does not invalidate the idea itself. In its strange phrasing, this question disavows the fact that straight people currently receive “special job rights,” in the same way that so many arguments against Affirmative Action disavow white male privilege.

2. Do you support the use of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund homosexual “art”, so called AIDS-awareness programs and homosexual research grants that are frequently funneled to political advocacy?

Buried deep in that diatribe is the kernel of a half-decent point: Some AIDS charities do still frame AIDS as a gay disease, and that is a grave mistake. But if the government is going to fund any art (a separate issue), then it is more or less inevitable that some of the artists will be gay, and that some of the art will be activist in nature. And as for research grants being used to advocate a particular political ideology, that problem is hardly limited to any one branch of research, or to any one political project. Any research grant that says “Prove that heterosexual marriage is the best thing for children,” or “prove that heterosexual marriage is not the best thing for children,” rather than “let’s figure out the actual effect of heterosexual marriage on children” is bad research, plain and simple.

3. Should homosexuality be promoted in school as a healthy lifestyle choice, while information about the life threatening consequences are ignored?

Are there really sex education course that do not mention sexually transmitted infections? And for that matter, are there sexually transmitted infections that are transmitted through homosexual sex-acts, but not through heterosexual sex-acts? And for that matter, is there even such a thing as a homosexual sex-act?

4. Do you support same-sex “marriage” for homosexuals or “marriage-like” rights, like homosexuals being able to adopt children and raise them in their “lifestyle”?

The main issue here is the “condescending tone” and “seething, prejudicial contempt” implied by the “frivolous quotation marks.” No one is actually being quoted here, you’ll note.

5. Should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn traditional marriage between one man and one woman?

Again, this language is biased in the extreme: We’re overturning traditional marriage, not granting equal rights. And since the Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue, to grant queer Americans the right to marry would not be to “overturn” anything, legally speaking.

So, fellow American, my answer to all of these questions is: That’s a really stupid question, designed to flatter me if I agree with the person who wrote the question, and trap me into a compromising position if I do not. Which is really the answer to almost every question in almost every poll, if we’re being honest.

The Fundamentalist’s Paradox

Recently, I posted a three-part entry. My goal was to take a look at what Revolution Muslim, the group that warned Matt Stone and Trey Parker not to show an image of the Prophet Muhammad on South Park (and implied that the duo would almost certainly be murdered if they did not heed the “warning”), had actually said. I thought that it was important not to immediately dismiss the website as being too “radical” to hold a valid opinion–to meet it on its own terms and engage in the kind of open discussion that at least one of its bloggers claims to want. I want to approach everyone, and especially those with whom I strongly disagree, on terms of mutual respect and shared humanity.

But man-oh-man, does Revolution Muslim ever make that difficult.

Revolution Muslim is down at the moment, because of hacking or heavy traffic or both, so I am unable to look up the name of the blogger to whom I was responding. But at least one person at that website, Younus Abdullah Mohammed, is a massive hypocrite, and his hypocrisy has given me the opportunity to bump up against the outermost limits of my own patience and tolerance.

In a recent Gawker interview, Mohammed said that “We already know the outcome as Muslims… Islam will take over the world,” and will triumph over “the filth and trash that is America.” He said that most Americans are “dumbed down, stupid and pathetic.” He said that “it’s very justifiable to act violently against Western aggression,” and that “we did not start the war on September the 11th 2001. You started the war.”

Since that “we” is ambiguous–does he mean Muslims generally, or just the ones who commit acts of terrorism?–I am not in a position to answer that particular claim. But I am in a position to point out that Revolution Muslim is based in New York City. As Jon Stewart observes, Revolution Muslim can only say all of this “because of how much we, in this country, value and protect even their freedom of expression.”

And indeed, I value Younus Abdullah Mohammed’s freedom of expression very highly, even when he spouts hateful, perplexing gibberish about “Darwinist faggots who are as despicable as the rest, walking around eating your Triscuits.” (I’m pretty sure that evolution happened and is happening in some form or another, and I do enjoy Triscuits, so I guess that I am just such a “faggot.” I’ve been called worse). Younus Abdullah Mohammed is absolutely allowed his homophobia, his implied disbelief in evolution, and even his ill-defined hatred of this nation’s beloved snack crackers.

But if Islam were to “take over the world,” do you think that analogous dissent would be allowed? Do you think that I could have publicly called the Taliban “trash” as a citizen of Afghanistan, circa 2001, without being imprisoned or killed?

The central irony of Revolution Muslim is that it could only exist in the kind of society that it actively seeks to undermine and overthrow. Free speech allows for tirades against free speech, but theocracy does not allow for tirades against (or even minor disagreements with) theocracy. Speaking out against free speech is something of a self-negating principle.

Incidentally, in the Gawker article that I quoted above, you will find a reproduction of the 2005 cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head. Have a look, and downland it and archive it, because its availability is unreliable; due to the spectacular cowardice of the Western media in general, lots of people have yet to see the image at all, and it’s worth knowing what all the fuss was about. I can certainly see why the image was and is considered offensive, but that’s all the more reason to see it for yourself and form your own opinion.

I’ve Learned Something Today (3 of 3)

Do South Park’s last two episodes constitute an insult to Muslims? In the opinion of Revolution Muslim, it all comes down to a rather simple question: “Is there a purpose, other than evil, in insulting something someone holds sacred?” I would answer that question with an unqualified yes.

A simple example: The Catholic Church holds its hierarchy sacred, but we can and must insult the craven hypocrisy of Pope Benedict II, who continues to protect the child molesters in his employ. Here the purpose of insulting the Pope–who is supposed to be infallible, remember–is to stop trusted authority figures from raping children. The purpose is to stop evil, because sacred institutions are perfectly capable of the most horrific evil.

One must believe that sacred institutions can do evil, unless one wants to say that everything every religion does is good–which would be paradoxical, since the world’s myriad religions openly (and often productively) contradict one another. And if religions can do evil, then we have to be able to call them out on it. In the case of Catholic priests raping children, the evil would be in not attacking the sacred institution in question.

Since this point is such an important one, let us examine Revolution Muslim‘s argument in a little more detail. I would like to speak directly to Revolution Muslim.

While insulting Jesus, Moses, or any other prophet would remove someone from Islam, we Muslims are also forbidden to insult the deities that other religions hold in high esteem. Allah says in the Qur’an:

وَلاَ تَسُبُّواْ الَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ اللّهِ فَيَسُبُّواْ اللّهَ عَدْوًا بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ

Revile not those unto whom they pray beside Allah lest they wrongfully revile Allah through ignorance.

Therefore, as Muslims we do not define speech which has no place in a moral society as “free speech.”

Because I cannot read Arabic, I am utterly at the mercy of the translator as far as the wording of that Koranic quotation goes. But it seems to me that “reviling” is quite different from satirizing. Satires do not hate everything they mock. I believe that your assertion–that “speech which has no place in a moral society” is not “free speech”–confuses a moral society with a society in which everyone agrees about everything.

The entire point of free speech is that speech must be allowed to occur even if it offends people. That is precisely what makes free speech necessary. Without that safeguard, sacred institutions could do unlimited evil without being questioned or stopped. No individual, no group, and no religion should have the privilege of going unquestioned or uninsulted. A free society cannot afford to grant anyone that privilege.

We would also like Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone to understand the tastelessness of their portrayal, apologize and reflect on the words that follow. An apology or at least recognition of bad taste might not remedy the situation, but it would go a long way toward turning this situation from a gaping wound into an ugly scar.

No one denies that South Park is tasteless. Few satires retain good taste, for the simple reason that good taste is often incompatible with truth. But how has the show’s tastelessness wounded you? Where is the wound?

I do not mean that as a rhetorical question. I honestly want to understand. What gives Muslims the exclusive right not to be satirized, or even to be included in a satire of something else entirely? That is the question that Matt Stone and Trey Parker have asked, and they are still waiting for a satisfactory answer.

If the answer is simply that whoever threatens violence gets whatever he wants, then I resolutely reject that answer as unethical, arrogant, and incredibly dangerous.

I’ve Learned Something Today (2 of 3)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has this to say about the South Park episode entitled “200.”

The “South Park” episode “was not just funny, it wasn’t just witty” she said, but it also addressed what she called the essential issue that “one group of people, one religion, that is claiming to be above criticism, and I hope that in the aftermath of this, that we discuss that.”

The central premise of South Park is that no one is above criticism. It is one thing to abstain from depicting the Prophet Muhammad because of one’s own faith. It is quite another thing to abstain from depicting the Prophet Muhammad because the topic is off limits to everyone. That latter resolution is not the result of faith, but of fear–namely, the fear that radical Muslims will commit acts of physical violence in “response.” As I explained in my last post, it is irrational to blame the violence on the insult. Even if the violence is a response to the insult, the one does not follow inevitably from the other as a matter of cause-and-effect. There is at every step the vital element of free and rational choice.

Enter Revolution Muslim, the Internet community that got some attention for warning (and according to some, implicitly threatening) Matt Stone and Trey Parker against depicting the Prophet. In a recent post, Revolution Muslim called for “a deeper and more productive dialogue” on this matter. If they mean that earnestly, then I would like to contribute to the project of open, productive dialogue. So let’s go through their argument.

Revolution Muslim cites as its antithesis “the cloud of American debauchery.” Revolution Muslim refers to “American imperialism and its coincident culture of pagan hedonistic barbarism” as “a cancer which bites at the root of global injustice.” (Wouldn’t “biting at the root of global injustice” be good for global justice?) In other words, Revolution Muslim has no trouble handing out insults even as they declare their own faith gravely insulted. And after having said all of this, Revolution Muslim goes on to say:

This past week South Park aired an episode which insulted three of our beloved prophets: Musa (Moses), ‘Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad, peace be upon them all. Not only did they do this, but within the episode the makers of South Park made it very clear that they knew how the Muslims would feel and potentially respond to their show. In an effort to cover their actual intention to incite, the creators of South Park carefully contrived a plotline that they believed could only stump those Muslim extremists that may arise to defend the honor of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). They wished to degrade and mock a man who is held in highest regard by Muslims and many Non-Muslims alike, and indeed many have categorized Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the most influential human being that ever walked on Earth.

It is curious that this paragraph claims offense against Moses and Jesus as well as Muhammad, but sees that offense as being directed exclusively at Muslims. Indeed, the point of the episode was not to “mock” Muhammad, but to point out that we freely allow any religion but Islam, and any religious figure but Muhammad, to be publicly mocked. In this two-part episode of South Park, Siddhartha Buddha does lines of cocaine in front of children; Jesus Christ watches Internet pornography; Moses acts as a befuddled supercomputer; Joseph Smith breathes ice; Krishna transforms into Niel Diamond; and Lao Tzu reads minds and speaks in an outrageously stereotyped Chinese accent. And how is Muhammad “mocked?”

By placing the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a bear suit, the creators of South Park sought to insult the sacred, and show their blatant and general disregard for religion. By insulting our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) without the outright depicting of his image, the creators of South Park thought that they had found some loophole in the Muslim faith for them to mock.

The “loophole” in question is this one: After much deliberation, the people of South Park decide that the Prophet Muhammad can walk about in the open, so long as he is covered from head to toe. The only suitable and available costume, it seems, is a bear costume. This is (for some reason) the most offensive loophole, but it is not the only one that the show’s creators employ: Earlier in the episode, Randy Marsh shows his own rendering of Muhammad, which takes the form of an unrecognizable stick figure; just before the bear costume sequence, the Prophet is concealed inside a U-Haul, unseen and barely heard. Each time one of these workarounds is tried, the townspeople wince, expecting a violent attack at any moment and asking, “Was that… OK?”

Muhammad, then, is the only religious figure who is quite conspicuously not mocked in this episode. That’s the point. This is a satire of militant extremism, and of the cowardice of the Western media, not a gesture of American imperialism or some sort of attack against Islam.

The people of South Park spend the whole of this episode in a desperate attempt to appease whichever group is currently threatening them with physical violence. The satire, then, is not directed at any particular religious group, or even at religion generally, but at the self-congratulatory faux-morality of folding to terrorist threats. For indeed, anyone who threatens violence if such-and-such a thing is said, who inflicts his will and ideology on others by force and intimidation (i.e., terror), is by definition a terrorist.

To put it simply: Revolution Muslim, these recent South Park episodes are not an insult to you specifically, and in fact are not directed toward you at all–unless you are threatening violence against Matt Stone and Trey Parker, in which case the episodes are speaking directly to you, and in which case you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves.