Anne Applebaum, Take 2

The fair and balanced right-wing blogosphere continues to run with the Anne Applebaum snafu in the Washington Post. The latest to jump on the bandwagon is the respected Austin Bay who gives Applebaum credit for her history of generally good foreign policy pieces. As reluctant daily readers of the Post, we'll actually agree. But Bay gets to the root of a deeper problem here, one we've explored in many ways here at HazZzmat:

Anne Applebaum is confused, so what does a confused American liberal do? Blame American conservatives. Hey, read the DailyKos and you’ll conclude Bush is the enemy, not Al Qaeda.

He then provides some context for this observation:

Let me praise her first. Applebaum has clearly visited a few of those highly-politicized “art” (or so-called art) exhibitions. Her column of Wednesday, February 8 takes an effective swipe at the “hypocrisy of the cultural left.” She scalds several major newspapers that published Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ but have failed to publish the Danish cartoons. Her conclusion, which I endorse:

The moral: While we are nervous about gratuitously offending believers in distant, underdeveloped countries, we don’t mind gratuitously offending believers at home.

But now the pivot, bold emphasis ours:

Let me explain her meta-game. She writes for a liberal paper with a liberal agenda. She knows the cultural left is packed with hypocrites and poseurs, but to make that point while keeping her “I’m a good liberal” credentials in order, she has to go after conservatives.

Fair enough– conservatives deserve to be blasted on a slew of issues. However, the subject she chooses — so-called “right wing” treatment of Newsweek’s phony Koran-flushing story–isn’t one of them.

Applebaum still doesn’t understand what Newsweek did and how Newsweek’s fakery is categorically different from Denmark’s editorial cartoons. I will agree that political Islamist’s and secular tyrants provoked riots using Newsweek’s story and the Danish cartoons, but those folks aren’t the “right-wing blogosphere.”

Bay cites approvingly the Power Line semi-fisk we cited earlier today, and concludes with a decent capitalist commercial that wraps this up neatly:

My Creators Syndicate column on The Cartoon War anticipated this line of guff, though not from Ms. Applebaum. I honestly expected better. (My column first appeared February 8 at StrategyPage– the same day as Applebaum's It will run in the Washington Times on February 10, I suspect.)

The Washington Times, BTW, is America's newspaper, not the Washington Post.

We have long decried not only the nihilism and smug elitism of the left. We have always done our best to expose the situation under which this occurs, a sort of "dhimmitude" in the world of literature and the arts. People who write can "deviate" from the party line but will not be treated equally, will never be nominated for Pulitzer Prizes or MacArthur "genius" grants, will not get their books reviewed in the major media, or will receive, at best, hit-job reviews from predictable leftists. Except for the notable few, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc., who slipped below the radar when no one was looking, virtually no one who does not follow the party line in lockstep will have a very significant writerly career, whether as a journalist, critic, pundit, novelist, etc.

And that's what Bay is driving at in his post. Applebaum seems, in general, to have the discernment and talent to function objectively. But lest she be thrown out of the liberal pond to flop around, gasping for oxygen, on the parched shore with the bulk of conservative writers and artists (there are a few), she hews to the line and puts in the obligatory conservative-bashing where it isn't even called for and is entirely out of context.

The writerly life today is like a snotty high school clique. The rich, elite kids control the club. You don't get in until and unless they say so. And most of the time, they never will, since they know it all and are better than anyone else. This has killed, among other things, the writerly arts in this country, for it has created a generation of sheep posing as cutting-edge writers. Searching for objective truth is their alleged passion, although they can never find it on the right. But one must keep firmly in mind that all they're really trying to do is make sure they stay in the club so the rich, beautiful people will look at them once in awhile. The elites are careful to keep them in line by dispensing the occasional little prize to the ones who suck up the best. Deviation leads to permanent ejection from the feast and weeping and gnashing of teeth outside this heavily-gated community.

Unfortunately, as Bay has pointed out, desire for approval and conformity in this case undermined what could actually have been a very fine column by Applebaum. One can try to achieve excellence in writing, or one can write in such a way as to fit in. We now know where Anne Applebaum's tendencies lie. And the Gramscian left claims yet another victim in its War on Truth.

Mullahs = Liberals?

A piquant observation by Ann Coulter:

...Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals?

Read the rest of Coulter's rollicking observations here. Even at HazZzmat, we usually regard Ann as just a bit over-the-top. But her satirical observations on this subject are worth a read today if you can deal with a bit of creative hyperbole.

Al Qaeda in Laredo?

Check this out:

Improvised explosive devices, the home made bombs which have killed and maimed so many U.S. troops in Iraq, were among the items seized in three raids in the Texas border city of Laredo, federal officials said today.

Have we got an Al Qaeda problem in Laredo, Texas? Well, not that we know of actually, though it made for a swell headline. Fact is, these are terrorists all right: narco terrorists. Looks like they're picking up a few tips from our murderous friends in the Middle East. Texas cops are assuming the weapons are intended for use in Mexico. But their presence here is disconcerting and bears watching. Read more here.

Our main battle right now is against the Islamofascists. But this is, after all, a world war, and there are other forms of terrorism, too, other fronts against the various faces of fascism. (And terrorists all like to help each other, as we saw in Northern Ireland.)

Wonker worries sometimes that the U.S., intent on prevailing in the Middle East, is not paying enough attention to the narco-Marxist axis that is developing south of our own borders. Led and funded by the usual suspects, Cuba's Castro, Venezuela's Chavez, and the Colombian narco-terrorists, and recently joined by the new Bolivian government which is dedicated to becoming the world leader in raw cocaine, this growing menace needs to be put back on the radar screen, big time. These people are supremely violent. They exert control over Hispanic inner city youth gangs in the U.S. And the bulk of their profits comes from the U.S.

A major way to get an armlock on terrorism is to cut off the terrorists' funding. We've had some success with this in the Middle East. But we seem to be sending money to the narco terrorists faster than they can spend it. Who's sending it to them? Inner city drug addicts and criminals and jaded, empty headed affluent young people with more money than sense. They're wrecking their lives and the lives of others.

This is assymetrical warfare at its most intricate. And no one has a clue what to do.

Cartoon Intifada?

We've been calling the Danish cartoon flap "Cartoon-gate." But perhaps we're being too parochial, too inside-the-Beltway. Power Line is calling this the "cartoon intifada." And this superb post explains why. Much of this flap, as we have been learning, has been a put-up job by radical mullahs always eager to stir up trouble. Which is easy in the Middle-East where corrupt governments ensure poverty for the masses. With little else to do, the masses are easy to recruit for a little poster-making, yelling and screaming, and occasional embassy trashing, particularly if you slip 'em the Arab equivalent of a fiver.

While we crusade relentlessly against the ACLU for exterminating religion from the realm of public discourse in this country, we fully understand the concept they're twisting and exploiting: the disestablishment of religion. The U.S. is simply not allowed to establish a state religion. Which is quite different from wiping religion out. Religious influence on society and politics can be a beneficial thing. Religious control of society and politics is something entirely different.

When you witness the latest "scoundrel time" in the Middle-East, you really begin to appreciate the absolute brilliance of the concept of the separation of church and state that the Founding Fathers (not "framers") enshrined in our Constitution. The only way to defang the murderous mullahs is to spread this same concept into the governments and constitutions, such as they are, of the Middle East. The more you see of this "cartoon intifada," the more you appreciate the genius of our Founders, probably the most enlightened band of thinkers since the glory of ancient Greece.

Bad Apples from Anne Applebaum

We were so busy yesterday that we didn't even have the opportunity to respond to the bizarrely twisted logic of Anne Applebaum's column in yesterday's Washington Post, a newspaper that's really been going out of its way lately to undermine the Bush Administration; give aid and comfort to the enemy; and eviscerate our intelligence gathering apparatus by joining with the NYTimes and a bunch of disgruntled spies, and ex-spies, and maybe even a U.S. Senator, to give away all the details of our efforts to Al Qaeda and anyone else who's interested.

Applebaum, playing the moral equivalency tune so favored by the Gramscian left, tries to equate the absolutely false story put out last year by Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post, BTW) concerning Korans allegedly flushed down the toilet by GI guards at Guantanamo with the current Cartoon-gate flap. Both, she reasons, were examples of freedom of the press causing Islamic rioting. But she questions why right-wing blogs essentially support the Danish cartoonists' right to free speech and freedom of expression while they trashed Newsweek for the same.

Or, as she puts it:

The moral is: We defend press freedom if it means Danish cartoonists' right to caricature Muhammad; we don't defend press freedom if it means the mainstream media's right to investigate the U.S. government.

In other words, right-wing blogs are hypocritical. Excuse us? We dumped on Newsweek for reporting a FACTUALLY WRONG allegation that led to the usual mullah-manufactured riots. Not for "investigating." (Which is for the media just a code word for manufacturing malicious gossip about the Bushies.) And that was bad?

Or as Power Line puts it:

So, were we more critical of false charges leveled by an American magazine against the American armed forces than of a dozen innocuous drawings in a Danish newspaper? Guilty as charged. We were.

Read Power Line's entire, excellent semi-fisking of Applebaum's nonsensical column here. The story includes a link to the original Applebaum column.

We have been amazed over the years at how almost any article, column, observation from the left on almost any topic eventually blames every single problem on the right side of the aisle. The Gramscian left seems to have lost its sophistication entirely when it comes to media manipulation. Leftist writers and journalists have successfully transformed political analysis into a non-stop assembly-line for manufacturing non sequiturs, spewing out wildly unfounded and unreasoned observations as fast as they can work a QWERTY keyboard. This is what happens to any political movement that walls itself off from serious debate with its opponents, and the intellectual rigor that such debating requires.

By extension, this is also why the academic left is very careful either to keep conservative speakers off campus, or guarantee that leftist goon squads will shout them down when they do manage to slip in. If students could actually sit and listen to any conservative for an uninterrupted half hour without the presence of infiltrating brown shirts, their weakly leftist certain certainties, fed to them continuously and unchallenged by leftist professors, would immediately begin to evaporate. The leftists know it which is why they keep the conservatives out.

The emperor had no clothes. The leftists have no case. It's a simple as that. Applebaum's improbable analogies are only the latest and most public example of this. And the public is gradually tuning this out. If the right is so bad and so wrong, the left needs to supply an alternative vision. But they can't because they don't have one. So it therefore must be the fault of the right. Right?

CNN Ruthlessly Maintains Its Double Standard

Power Line notes the following:

Michelle Malkin notes that CNN has decided not to show the Mohammed cartoons that have been printed in several European and American newspapers "because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself." Well, sure. That would explain why CNN didn't show the Abu Ghraib photos.

Heh.

Check out the apropos Cox & Forkum cartoon at the same link. For Cox & Forkum's choice comments on dhimmitude, Islam's answer to Gramscian subversion, read their current post. Dhimmitude is what the Islamofascists intend for us.

So go ahead and bash Bush for trying to address this new kind of slavery, Rev.Lowery.

Cartoon-gate: The Plot Sickens

Amir Taheri writes:

Islamic ethics is based on "limits and proportions," which means that the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy.

Read the rest of the excerpt here via Instapundit. Read the whole interesting piece, with its interesting image, here.

Meanwhile, Condi Rice singles out the real perps, Syria and Iran, who are driving this mindless violence to move their own dirty deeds beneath the fold before the pressure becomes too great.

Busy Dude

Up to the eyeballs in the salt mines today. I'll try to weigh in this afternoon with some pungent comments on something or other. My friends on the left side of the aisle and in the Middle East will surely give me more ammunition.

My main disappointment these days is that the French are getting serious and are currently not providing any targets of opportunity. But maybe that's progress.

Demagoguery at the King Funeral

We've spent a good bit of virtual ink over the past week railing at bloodthirsty mullahs. But we seem to have developed our fair share of pulpit demagogues over on this side of the Atlantic as well. This afternoon, President Bush and the first lady paid their respects by attending, along with former presidents Clinton, Bush, and Carter, today's memorial service for Coretta Scott King in Atlanta. But speaking to the multitudes, Rev. Joseph Lowery couldn't resist the opportunity for a little tasteless demagoguing, according to the indespensible Matt Drudge:

"She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said.

The crowd, of course, whooped it up on cue, according to Drudge. Nothing like a little friendly Bush-bashing at a memorial service. But the good rev, surely emulating the fine example of love and brotherhood set by the late Dr. King, wasn't done yet:

"But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.

The usual redistributionist mantra that hasn't helped America's African-American population to this day. We're surprised he didn't make a pitch for reparations.

Ah, but our honored guets weren't done with the Bush celebrity roast quite yet. The First Peanut Farmer from Plains had to get in a few gratuitous licks as well, basking in a glory he never earned, forgetting that at least a few people like this commentator remember the days of an utterly failed presidency, 16% mortgage rates, and America's utter humiliation in Iran, the legacy of which confronts us, and George W. Bush, today. Yes, the Nation's worst-ever ex-President said of the Kings:

"It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly.

Sorry, Jimmy. This is indeed the current Known Fact™ meme the MSM has been trotting out during the current flap. But let's take a look at history as it actually was. It was Saint Robert Kennedy, Democrat, who ordered the wiretaps (and unlike the current flap, these WERE domestic wiretaps). But being a Democrat is never having to say you're sorry. But the sanctimonious Carter was not yet finished:

Later, Carter said Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America. Some black leaders have blamed Bush for the poor federal response, and rapper Kayne West said that Bush "hates" black people.

The gratuitious lie by Macarthur Genius Grant winner West was just icing on this bitter cake. Obviously, the marauding mullahs of the Middle East are rank amateurs when compared to national treasures like Carter and Lowery, both clearly driven by God to impose a fatwah on the President who, unlike them, has striven to keep the U.S. free from attack since 9/11. Both convincingly disgraced the memory of the late Dr. King who was as revered for his mild manner as he was for his support of nonviolence.

The real, multiplying disasters that continue to ripple even today from Dr. King's assassination in 1968 were on full display during these services for Mrs. King—a persistently corrupt, archaic, and hard left black leadership irrevocably in the thrall of a Democratic party that doesn't care a fig for them except at election time; a Louisiana state Democratic party that, being in near total control of Louisiana and New Orleans, largely has itself to blame and not George Bush for the wretched initial hurricane response and evacuation (and police department) that never happened; and a national Democratic party that enthusiastically and unashamedly embraces black demagogues who take great pains to distance African-Americans from the rest of America. Their claiming of the mantle of a man who longed and publicly prayed for a color-blind America is certainly fraud and verges on sacrilege.

Outcomes such as these were most decidedly never what Dr. King had in mind as he preached racial equality to a Nation at war with itself. Today's sorry spectacle in Atlanta is yet another example of how the hard left in America works tirelessly to keep things that way, to erode our culture and traditions and inflame racial tensions as a means of keeping "class struggle" in play by whatever means necessary. But nowhere has this Marxist reflex become more disgusting than the left's shameless appropriation of Dr. King, clearly a man of peace, to be used as a mere tool, a mere pretext, providing a bully pulpit for today's hypocrites, the Democratic apostles of contiuing racial hatred and divisiveness.

UPDATES: The Anchoress draws an important parallel to this behavior in her post "Wellstoning the King Funeral." Instapundit has pithy comments here. With some good links.

Fisking Antonia Zerbisias...And a Little Bit More

Wonk is having to work for a living today, but can't resist jumping into Cartoon-gate, the gift that keeps on giving. And it does, too, because it has really forced people, even in strange quarters, to focus on the real issue here as well as in the War on Terrorism: The Culture Wars.

First, a typical diatribe from the morally superior, haven't-got-a-clue wing of the Canadian left, ripe for a bit of fisking:

To be honest, I think that, here in Canada anyway, our Muslim communities are too diverse and too embedded in our culture and society for any kind of concerted reaction.

Yep. It can't happen here. Where have we heard that before? Paris?

As for violence, I would guess that Muslims are more victims than perpetrators....

Yes again, guess we'd better arrest all those Danish cartoonists who are running around slaughtering people.

Frankly, we're a lot more tolerant society than our own intolerant right would like to believe.

Indeed, we Canadian lefties tolerate everything except the obviously intolerant people who disagree with us.

Which makes me wonder who the real hate-mongers are: those who are cut off from modern communications technology and are more easily subject to the machinations of ignorant clerics — or those that should know better and who claim to be morally superior.

Like the writer herself, Antonia Zerbisias, no doubt? Note the brilliant illogic of the Gramscian pivot here: since we have superior communication technologies, Islamic riots are our fault, for how can you blame the mullahs who are so obviously ignorant that they can ignite coordinated, worldwide bogus demonstrations and fund them on only a few hours notice? Here, Zerbisias simultaneously blames the victims, blames the right (which had absolutely nothing to do with the cartoons), and creates an entirely new Known Fact™ regarding the existence of "obviously ignorant" mullahs. Who somehow know how to manipulate hi-tech media with unparalleled brilliance. A new class of idiots savants? Gee, we would hate to see what an intelligent cleric in the Middle East might do.

But back to my Antonia. How, pray, does the Toronto Star's resident Marxist get there from here?

Follow their [the right's] politics and you'll understand why they're on this particular blogwagon: they hate Muslims. In fact, if they were to write about Jews the way they sometimes do about followers of the Prophet Muhammad, they'd be denounced as anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers.

So it isn't surprising that some of their more eager acolytes have gone far beyond denigrating the fanatical rioting, which has, at deadline, claimed six lives and left hundreds of wounded.

Yes. It's George Bush's fault!!! (Well, she didn't get there, but that's probably because she ran out of column inches.) The rest of this article is padded with the usual namecalling that serves as a substitute for intelligent comment on the left side of the aisle.

This is why the left simply can't be treated seriously anymore, whatever the country—and even in liberal Canada which just couldn't take this stuff unadulterated anymore, electing its first Conservative government in what seems like decades.

Let's get Zerbisias' dialectical argument straight: satirical cartoons, published several months ago in a clearly liberal Danish publication, suddenly get "discovered," perhaps by pro-Iranian mullahs and their friends, looking to take a little heat off their current Hitler-in-training President. These "holy men" stir up riots from their mosques around the Islamic world to divert attention from from their own fanatics, and to maybe cow the Europeans into "submitting" to the dictates of foreign nationals without those foreign nationals needing to fire a shot in Denmark. And oh, yeah, a few of these peace lovers get carried away with their vehemence and other people get killed.

But it's all the fault of the right-wing bloggers. Even though it's lefty journos who are publishing all the cartoons. Go figure. But then again, as we've said many times before, you can't expect logic from people who regard logic as a capitalist tool and rely instead on the constant agitprop lies at the core of Marxist-Leninism's yet-beating heart. Dialectical argumentation is a tough thing to grasp because it never has to make any sense. It just has to shout louder and slam home incorrect terminology with ruthless abandon until you actually believe it's correct.

But don't take this from us. Instapundit (where we discovered the link to this nonsense) quotes a few sage reader comments as well, like this one:

Ms. Zerbisias' logic is flawless. I think if we've learned anything from this, it's that the ONLY people to blame for the rioting are the people sitting in their homes on a continent where the cartoons did not originate and where there is no rioting. It's as clear as day. Oh and also Michelle Malkin is fat.

Or this sinking curveball:

Zerbisias condemns those Westerners who "claim to be morally superior." Well that is absolute horseshit. I am tired of being told not to judge other cultures through my "American lens" because I don’t understand their circumstances. I believe in equal rights without regard to race, religion, color, gender or country or origin. I believe in the freedom of homosexuals to marry and live freely in society. I believe in freedom of expression, and speech, and the free exchange of ideas. I believe in kindness, compassion, consideration, and that dogs make life better. I don’t "claim to be morally superior" to those ass-hat murderers; I am morally superior.

Okay, we right-wing knuckle-draggers draw the line at "homosexual marriage" (another attempt by the Gramsicans to rearrange a long-agreed-upon secular-religious tenet), though many of us have no problem with civil unions. But you get the point. The correspondent above has had it up to here with leftist multi-culti crappola and states his case about as clearly as anyone dares state it in our politically correct times.

Read the whole blog entry here. There's lots more and lots more links.

Perhaps the current deadly cartoon brouhaha, stage-managed by Islamofascists intent, like their Gramsican friends, on undermining the entirety of Western culture without too much damage to themselves, has finally revealed the ultimate Culture War for what it is: The somewhat culturally debilitated West vs. fanatical fascists from the Middle East and from the dead end of Soviet Totalitarianism. Both enemies are united in a weird, violent scrum dedicated to overthrowing all that is decent so that everyone can live at last in equal squalor and misery, cowed, huddled, and dictated to by screaming, self-righteous fascists seething with rage while lacking entirely the saving grace of an immortal soul.

The outlines of the past century are now becoming quite clear, although those with a short-attention span and no knowledge of history will find this difficult to grasp. Since early in the 20th century, we have been involved in a nearly continuous Hundred Years' War of unprecedented scope and complexity. Whether ignited by the first flutterings of Bolshevism in Russia, or the domino-like collapse of a decaying European elite that ignited what is currently known as the First World War, civilization has embarked on an ultimate war that has yet to be concluded. Its major battles have included the First War Against Fascism (WWII); The War Against Communist Totalitarianism (The Cold War); and the Second War Against Fascism (the Global War on Terror or GWOT).

For over a century we have been engaged with a protean enemy whose visage always looks the same: The Negative Utopian possessed of a simple, Final Solution to all the ills of society. And the end is not yet in sight. Let's face what's going on for what it is. And together, bring it to an end.

Moderate Islamic Response, Take 2

This encouraging post via Instapundit:

MODERATE MUSLIMS offer this apology for the cartoon wars. Excerpt:

We condemn the shameful actions carried out by a few Arabs and Muslims around the world that have tarnished our image, and presented us as intolerant and close-minded bigots.

Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.

We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit himself) encourages folks to check out the whole link that appears above, but as of this writing, the link is generating an error. One learns to be a bit skeptical these days, but we hope the above is genuine. If so, this is a side of Islam that we simply are not seeing in the West. We'll keep our eye on the link and update here if it becomes functional enough again, and if we can verify a little further who's involved with the post. But Instapundit usually has his facts straight.

The American Left and the Islamofascists: Blood Brothers

If you think HazZzmat has been a little off the wall in its linkage of America's lunatic left with rampaging Islamofascists, check out this snapshot of a typical freedom loving anti-Bush demonstrator from this weekend's essentially failed anti-war rally in Washington, DC:

Grafik courtesy of a link at Little Green Footballs. UPDATE: The link, down earlier, is now back up, and lgf is stating that unusual web traffic has been slowing the site down, just in case you give it a try.

One of the key practical tenets of Marxism-Leninism is that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Nowhere is that more obviously and graphically displayed than in this photograph. The black humor in all this is that the essentially godless atheists of the left would be the first to lose their heads if the Caliphate were ever restored. The mindless fury of the moonbat crowd, along with its unbounded faith in a ruinous philosophy whose continuous failures and rejection have no parallel in human history, is absolutely beyond any rational comprehension. It is genuinely suicidal. And make no doubt about it. If they can't have their way (and they can't), they'll take us right down with them.

Cruci-fixins? Muslims Think THEY Get No Respect?

With all the flap about Cartoon-gate, we wonder if anyone has been following this little drama over on God-fearing NBC:

The NBC "Will and Grace" episode featuring Britney Spears hosting a cooking show called "Cruci-fixins" has been cancelled in the wake of Christian protests, but the term was actually recycled from a Fox network show.

It was first used on the oddball comedy "Arrested Development," when one of the characters quipped: "I think I'm going to go get one of those 'Corndog Crosses' -- with all the 'Crucifixins'"

We also learn that there's a little bit of history behind this madcap anti-Christian fun:

"The Simpsons" cartoon also used the term in an episode that described a church ice cream social led by a character called Rev. Lovejoy. Lovejoy offered "Crucifixins," with flavors like "Blessed Virgin Berry," "Commandmint," and "Biblegum."

As far back as 1991, the term popped up in Advertising Age magazine, as part of an entry for a lighthearted contest to predict McDonald's next slogan intended to "pack in the pilgrims" at its new location in Lourdes. "Try our new Crucifixin's Bar" won an "honorable intention" award.

Sound kinda like some stuff we were alluding to here and here, and the thoughts of one of our commenters here. More to the point, here's the latest scoop on the "Will and Grace" episode (and we note that even the title of this fairly popular series has a bit of a religious sneer in it, given one of the main characters' gay-ness, but we'll let that pass):

After NBC began promoting the April 13 "Will and Grace" episode, which was to air on the day before Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar, the American Family Association (AFA) posted a "special alert" at the top of its web page with the headline, "NBC to mock the Crucifixion of Christ." The story line of the episode had the fictional Out TV network being bought by a Christian network. Spears played the co-host of a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's."

The AFA viewed the "Will and Grace" episode as an intentional mocking of Christians, following a similar Christian uproar that led to NBC canceling "The Book of Daniel." Donald Wildmon, founder of the AFA, accused NBC of a "deep-seated anti-Christian bias."

A new press release from NBC said the original release was erroneous and the Spears episode had not yet been written. "We value our viewers and sincerely regret if this misinformation has offended them," the network stated.

Right. We so totally believe that last graf. Unlike Cartoon-gate, whose timing, if there was any sense of timing, was random, and which actually occurred last fall, this episode was not only cooked up to diss Christianity, but to provoke maximum outrage by airing it during Christianity's high holy days, the doctrinal focus of the Liturgical Year. Outrage, after all, sells commercials which is what it's all about.

This goes deeper, too, as "Will and Grace" appeals to the young urban demographic that the withering networks still seek—a demographic that has been skewing less and less religious as the educational system and the courts have eviscerated the importance of religion and morality (sexual and otherwise) from within, and merchandise hawkers have assaulted it from without, turning the latest vulgar fashion into a kind of new, all-secular version of Baal-worship, to borrow a theme from the Old Testament.

A post-script ends this particular new piece:

The original announcement of the "Cruci-fixins" episode had generated press around the world.

Yep. But no embassy burnings or beheading threats. Our point? Christians finally got fed up with NBC's disrespectful, blasphemous nonsense, and prevailed without rampaging around in various cities across the globe in a murderous fury.

Folks, there is still a place, even in the Land of Free Speech, for a little respect for the beliefs of others. It isn't difficult and it isn't censorship. There's a lesson here, but the MSM won't be quick to point it out. Which is why their collective ratings continue to slip.

UPDATE: Frontpagemag has a link-filled, useful historical reprise of the Serrano/Piss Christ scandal here for those who have forgotten. Writer Rocco DiPippo accurately notes that the outrage has not stopped Serrano over the years from continuing to foist bad art on the public and basking in the praise of the unrepentant left that enjoys the Gramscian splendor of ripping apart Western religious, moral, and cultural institutions. But DiPippo also demonstrates how Serrano has increasingly receded as the infantile, stunt-addicted left and their hateful anti-cultural programs are exposed. The piece concludes with a segueway into the current controversy and urges readers to support the Danes in their hour of need.

A Moderate Islamic Response to Cartoon-gate

Via Kausfiles, we're able to read of a sensible Islamic response to the latest frenzy surrounding Europe's Cartoon-gate. Guess who?

In Iraq, the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, decried the drawings but did not call for protests.

"We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action," he said in a statement posted on his Web site and dated Tuesday.

Al-Sistani, who wields enormous influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, made no call for protests and suggested that militant Muslims were partly to blame for distorting Islam's image.

He referred to "misguided and oppressive" segments of the Muslim community and said their actions "projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood."

"Enemies have exploited this ... to spread their poison and revive their old hatreds with new methods and mechanisms," he said.

Well, how about that? We're impressed.

Atrios: A Strange New Respect?

We generally avoid getting anywhere near the commentary of left-wing fulminator Atrios, but then we read this:

I don't want Iran to have nukes. I don't think that's a good thing for the world. I certainly didn't want Pakistan or India to have nukes. But is a nuclear Iran really a threat to us? Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn't mutually assured destruction, it's you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!

Instapundit is ready to nominate Atrios for Secretary of State. Are we experiencing political realignment here??!!

UPDATE: A Little Green Footballs reader makes the following observation:

Well, I guess since it wasn’t said by a Little Green Footballs commenter, it doesn’t count as anti-Muslim hate speech.

Heh.

Social Politics in Annapolis: Gramsci Style

After a Maryland court ruling in favor of the concept of "gay marriage," the minority Repubs in Annapolis pushed for a constitutional amendment banning it, to be placed on statewide ballot in this fall's state and Congressional elections. Many Dems also favored putting the proposed amendment on the ballot, not wanting to get caught on the wrong side of an issue that has angered many Marylanders, even the libs.

Well, notoriously partisan House Speaker Mike Busch pulled a parliamentary maneuver that prevented the issue from being voted on, and has probably kept it off the ballot this fall.

Power Line has an interesting and creative analysis of this flap. Read it here for the full scoop.

But the best line is here: a succinct summation of Gramscian deviousness at work, in this case by pushing political issues off to left-liberal jurists, thus freeing leftist Dems from the electoral consequences of their own actions against the express wishes of their constituencies.

The strategy of liberal Democratic politicians has long been to have the courts do the heavy lifting in implementing the social revolution they crave. Now, at least in Maryland, the politicians must do some lifting of their own to protect themselves against the backlash from that revolution.

More Saturday Morning Cartoons

You try to take some time off and look what happens. As best we are able to determine, this photo comes from an anti-Danish-Cartoonist protest in the UK:

Off with their heads!! Sorta sounds like the Red Queen, doesn't it. Except that we're dealing with real murderers here, not a pack of playing cards.

Pix obtained from Instapundit, which hopefully cites a moderate and sensible Muslim point of view on this continuing controversy:

The Danish press has also paid very little attention to the representatives of a group of 80 immigrants who have expressed their support of Jyllands-Posten. A statement by the group placed on the internet carries the caption "We must condemn Islamist threats against free speech." It goes on to accuse the Islamists of "viewing any criticism or any making fun of the Islamic religion as an affront and an insult to Muslims. In this way they want to prevent any human being from questioning the Islamic religion and its holy book and the prophet Muhammad. ... With the same argument Islamic regimes and other forces in the Middle Eastern and Arabic countries have killed thousands of people and issued fatwas against authors, journalists and artists."

Exactly right. Where have these people been? (Ignored by the Danish press we guess.) We were hoping they were out there somewhere. Problem is, Muslims like this are probably as terrified of the Islamofascist thugs as everyone else is, including the Danish cartoonists, who are allegedly going into hiding as of this writing. So much for free speech and attempts to appease these murderous thugs. People seem to realize that when the goon squads threaten you with death they really mean it. (Unlike when the U.N. threatens Iran with reprisals.)

Instapundit also charts the Boston Globe's cowardly response to this incident, and alludes to their overwhelming support for "Piss Christ" over a decade ago. Read the whole thing here.

As Emerson once wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." We were never totally sure what that delightful observation meant, even in context, but somehow it seems like a good idea to bring it back here at this point if only to ask the editors of the Globe how they would interpret it.

More Thoughts on the Cartoon-gates

Wonk blogged up a storm this week and intends to take it easy this weekend unless prompted by a fresh outrage. Of course, the current cartoonish "gates" are running full tilt in the WaPo today (re: Tom Toles' offensive cartoon) even as the Islamofascists around the world are working themselves into a froth over the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

The silver lining in the ongoing cartoon flaps is that they pose two overlapping dilemmas of prudence and balance that are nearly impossible for moral relativists on the left to grasp. In the context of U.S. jurisprudence, at least, neither Toles' cartoon nor the Danish caricatures would be out of line here, although they could easily be deemed offensive, which they are. Yet, what comes into play is the conflict between what is permissible (quite a lot) and what is probably not a good idea in the context of accepted local or national community standards, like dissing the DoD and our soldiers when they're still in the line of fire, or taking an offensive whack at an organized religion's core dogma.

Here at HazZzmat and elsewhere in the blogosphere and in the op-ed pages of newspapers, people who are fed up with the cynical and anti-American attitudes of the hard left as represented by Toles, are doing what they do best: writing negative letters to the editor, signing critical group letters, and putting out nasty blogs on the Internet. And, to be honest, plenty of folks supporting Toles and his position are firing back. What's likely to happen is that people will have their say, life will go on; and Toles will be a tad more careful on some topics, although no doubt the devil will make him sin again. But in an environment where free speech is permitted and religions are honored but not "established" by the state, that's generally the way it goes. The system has social checks and balances which have the general effect at the end of the day of steering things fairly close to the middle ground where people of differing but defensible points of can co-exist with relative comity.

In the roughly 8th century world of the Islamofascist, such accomodations with the opposition are unthinkable. The concept of a secular state still does not have much traction in the world of Islam for whatever reason. Religion is strongly established and cannot be unwrapped from government. It must have been the same way many centuries ago in some sense when the Vatican controlled the papal states and possessed at least moral suasion over the evolving Holy Roman Empire. This eventually proved to be untenable and unworkable, at least for the rapidly civilizing Europeans. And today, the only vestige of this era is the Pope's political dominion of the artifact known as Vatican City.

It's clear that an outcome like this is unthinkable for Islamofascists. Government as well as individual lives must conform to the dictates of mullahs who still imagine that their predecessors' ouster from Spain centuries ago was but a temporary detour on the road to world domination. The West, particularly leftist intelligentsia, find this fact almost impossible to grasp, perhaps because they themselves do not see that their own parallel conviction—that one-world socialism will someday dominate this planet—has also ended up on the trash heap of history along with any number of other negative utopias.

And yet dogmatic convictions such as these are extraordinarily challenging to turn back once they've gotten fired up. For the proceed from the passion of faith and dogma rather than stemming from logic and reason.

When Western media and governments can be induced to offer abject apologies to Islamofascists rather than stand their ground, they cede their own logic and traditions and appease the forces of irrationalism. I've been reading where we need to be more "sensible" and "moderate" in our approaches in order to avoid "inflaming" the Islamofascist element in the Middle East and elsewhere. And indeed, it makes no sense to deliberately provoke anyone under any circumstances.

But in circumstances where your opponent will kill you simply because you're a Jewish reporter (Danny Pearle) or will blow up people enjoying a cup of tea in a restaurant just to sow mayhem, we fail to see where any accomodation at all with the enemy makes a particle of sense. For accomodation or compromise with one's opponent assumes that the opponent, like you, is rational and can be persuaded to adopt some kind of middle ground for the sake of peaceful co-existence.

But it is abundantly clear that with the Islamofascists, we are not dealing with anything rational at all. We are dealing with xenophobia and intolerance driven by mullahs who put a vicious spin on religious dogma to achieve their own totalitarian aims. The Muslim demonstrations against the Danish cartoons thus ring hollow. They make for great TV, and no doubt today, Al Jazeera is enjoying some of its best ratings since the night we attacked Baghdad.

But there is simply no reason to appease these people at all. They show our way of life no respect whatever. They cannot be appealed to by reason. They have no desire to live side by side with us in peace. And they want every one of us dead, or at least maimed. They will deserve no respect from us at all until they demonstrate a willingness to return the favor.

Europe appeased a nasty little Austrian with a mustache once because they thought that if they did, he'd settle down and stop being mean to everybody. We saw how well that worked. Are intellectuals in Europe and the U.S. actually proposing a re-run of this movie?

More Fun With Cartoongate

Just when you thought things were getting too hot in the censorship department, you link to a news story about the Euro-Islamic cartoon flap with peace-loving quotes like these:

'We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible,' one preacher told worshippers at the al-Omari Mosque in the Gaza Strip as tensions spread over the publication of the cartoons, first in Denmark and later in Norway, France, Germany and Spain.

'We will not be satisfied with protests. The solution is the slaughter of those who harmed Islam and the Prophet,' said Sheikh Abu Sharif, spokesman for the militant Osbet al-Ansar group, at a rally in Lebanon's largest camp, the southern Ein al-Hilweh.

At a rally organized by the Islamic militant group Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections last week, as many as 50,000 protesters called for the cartoonists to be punished. 'Let the hands that drew (the cartoons) be severed,' they chanted.

So much for the Oslo "peace process." (And what the hell is a "peace process" anyway?) Lucky for Tom Toles that he only dissed Rummy and the U.S. Military.

There's lots more here.

One has to chuckle (ruefully) at all the left wing-nuts who bleat about the "fascist" Christian fundamentalists in this country who want to suppress free speech, declaring the Christers to be a far greater threat to their liberties than Islam. Wonker has always been a big fan of freedom of religion, one of the things that has made the U.S. great. But when you read stuff like this, tally the daily Baghdad homicide bomb tolls, view the hostage and beheading videos, and listen to Bin Laden's and Zawahiri's latest rants, you really have to wonder just what became of this "religion of peace" that everyone is always telling us about. Is there something we're missing here?

UPDATE: From Laurence Simon via SISU:

I think the Danish ambassador should issue an apology. In the largest Christian church in Saudi Arabia.

Amen.

Flash: CNN Respects Islam

(PS: Wish they respected Christianity, too.)

Still LOL here at HazZzmat as we read CNN's online version of the escalating "Cartoons of the Prophet" controversy here. The article, which concludes without a single link to the offending cartoons, ends with this stunning disclaimer:

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

Well, burn my britches. Do I recall last year when CNN founder Ted Turner dissed Catholics for wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday by calling them Jesus Freaks? Or all his other snide asides, duly reported by CNN whether he offered phoney apologies or not? Guess all religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Then again, on a related note, here's a choice comment from an Instapundit reader who is not at all happy about our own State Department's typically lefty response to the flap:

Reader John Friedman emails: "I'm sorry. Did I miss the State Dept. analysis of 'Piss Christ?' Perhaps you could link to it."

Read the main piece here.

We are now starting to hear some of the usual appeasement bleating in fashionable European circles when the Euro governments should be sticking to their guns. Fact is, as we stated elsewhere yesterday, from a strictly theological point of view, those cartoons ARE blasphemous for Muslims, just the way "Piss Christ" and "Elephant Dung Virgin" and lots of South Park episodes are for Christians. We actually agree. We're just not sure that the correct solution is asking the Iranians to nuke Denmark. (That'll show 'em.)

But what's the deal here with lefty intellectualoids, in particular, stumbling all over themselves to appease Muslim outrage while those impassioned Islamofascists don't give a rat's derrière about stupid Christian infidels? Do we detect some kind of double standard here among European elites or in the peace-loving world of Islam? Or have Christians simply not stabbed enough journalists and filmmakers to death yet to make an impression?

On the other hand, we have to wonder about all the Islamofascists jumping around in a rage and burning Danish flags when they danced in the streets in 2001 after a few of their fellow fanatics wasted over 3,000 innocent American lives in the Pentagon and the WTC. Or the ones who praised Allah as they clamored for re-runs of the Danny Pearle beheading video. We really have to wonder why beheading and mass-slaughter of innocents is okay, but a cartoon gets death threats for the perps. Is there some sense of proportion missing here?

Lately, I hear of people who are afraid of a terrorist attack on this year's Super Bowl. Millions are being spent behind the scenes as a hedge against the possibility. Do Muslims have a similar level of fear during the Hajj?

If our Islamic friends in the Middle East and elsewhere really want us to play nice, perhaps they might consider putting away their bloody knives and suicide vests, investing in their economies, providing infrastructure for their people, leaving the Israelis in peace, and maybe even writing outraged letters to European editors who run uncivilized cartoons and caricatures.

Naaaahhh....

UPDATE: Power Line weighs in here. Plenty of pix, putting themselves on the line, and noting that the radical clerics are stirring the pot. Who knew?

Power Line also comments on what, sadly, should be the obvious. Why are folks in the press being called upon to practice "restraint" so as not to "antagonize" the Islamofascists? Isn't that censorship? Doesn't that mean that the terrorists win? Aren't we living in a democracy where we say Tom Toles can trash our soldiers in the Washington Post and where portraits of the Blessed Virgin slopped over with elephant excrement can hang in the Brooklyn Art Museum and be proclaimed art? What if this torques soldiers and Christians off? Should we censor this, too?

This kind of debate should actually be unnecessary. But it IS necessary because the last 50 years of creeping moral relativism has blurred moral distinctions into an entropic mess. Wonk seriously wonders whether this country any longer possesses the moral fiber and conviction to counter the Islamofascists and expose their little game.

If blasphemy is okay for one religion but not okay for another, what kind of standards are we proclaiming, anyway?

Precisely.