Category Archives: murder
Climate of Fear
The Islamic Caliphate is capturing and holding territory in Anbar province and Syria. ISIS murdered 262 people in Palmyra over Memorial Day weekend. If past behavior is any guide, antiquities there could be doomed. President Obama called the defeat of Ramadi a “tactical setback”.
In a commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy last week the president hinted at his military priorities. He named climate change the top national security threat.
Cartoon Punch Down
If somebody tells you you can’t draw something, the proper response of any self-respecting cartoonist is to draw that thing. Bosch Fawstin did exactly that and won first prize in the “Draw Mohammad” contest a week ago. In his cartoon a sword wielding Mohammad says, “You can’t draw me”, to which Fawstin responds, “That’s why I draw you.”
He also drew a response. Two heavily armed would be jihadis were gunned down by a cop with a pistol as they tried to turn “Draw Mohammad” into a “Charlie Hebdo” style massacre.
Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau’s approach is different from the Fawstin way. He explained it in his acceptance speech for a Polk lifetime achievement award last month. It’s the punching bag theory of cartooning. He says that satire must always punch up at the powerful and never punch down at the powerless.
Now they tell me. There are rules for satire.
I like Doonesbury but haven’t liked its politics ever since the entire cast cheered Nixon’s wage/price controls back in the early 70’s. But that’s no reason to not appreciate a good cartoon. Doonesbury has been like an ongoing play with well developed characters who grow over time. It’s witty too. Most of the time.
Steyn Punch Down
Mark Steyn, on the other hand, hates Trudeau’s guts. So I picked out some of the good stuff from his column A Contemptible Man Strikes Down:
“The Polk Award is named after a journalist shot dead at point-blank range in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. So you might have thought it would be in ever so mildly bad taste to use the opportunity of a Polk acceptance speech to piss on the graves of a group of journalists similarly murdered. Nevertheless, that’s what Mr Trudeau did:
Charlie Hebdo, which always maintained it was attacking Islamic fanatics, not the general population, has succeeded in provoking many Muslims throughout France to make common cause with its most violent outliers. This is a bitter harvest.
Ah, so Charlie Hebdo is to blame for provoking ordinary, peaceful, moderate Muslims into supporting the Allahu Akbar guys who killed them.
Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.
Mothers Day in Baltimore
Nothing is more embarrassing than having your mom smack you upside the head and drag you home in front of your fellow rioters. Toya Graham didn’t want to see her son become another Freddie Gray . Her solution upstaged President Obama who condemned the violence in Baltimore, blamed Republicans, and called for more spending.
Root Causes of Terrorism
Marie Harf at the State Department said her concerns for the “root causes” of terrorism are too nuanced for the folks to understand. Since then ISIS has kidnapped 150 Christians and threatened to conquer Rome and the Mall of America.
Cool Fool
In the midst of the world wide jihad that dare not speak it’s name, the Fruit Loop President found time to fool around in the Oval Office. Not the Bill Clinton kind of fooling around – just acting like a fool.
Obama mugged in front of a mirror, took selfies with a camera on a stick, and whined, “can I live?” while shooting air free throws. It was part of a BuzzFeed video to reach the “young healthies” he needs to subsidize the old and unhealthy in ObamaCare.
Later in Libya, the land he “liberated“, 21 Coptic Christians, or ‘Egyptians” as he called them, were beheaded, 45 Iraqis were burned alive, and two people were killed in an attack on a Danish cartoonist.
Maybe the president is a cool fool like a fox. His Gallup Poll approval rating reached 50% today.
