Category Archives: Religion
Gay Marriage Bigotry
Everybody knows President Obama was against same sex marriage until he was for it. He said he evolved on the issue. Justice Kennedy and four other members of the Supreme Court also evolved this week. Now that it’s a civil right, opposition to gay marriage could be considered bigotry.
Pope’s Encyclical
Have you read the Pope’s encyclical? Me either. But I’ve read reviews and there’s more to it than global warming. I do plan to read it, but for now it looks like the warmists have God on their side, or at least His agent.
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.
Ayatollah Advice
Ayatollah Khamenei recently held a fire and brimstone revival in Iran. He said there would be no nuclear deal unless sanctions are lifted immediately.The Supreme Leader then presided over a rousing chorus of Death to America chants.
