Blaspheme and its discontents

The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations

We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media bias.

Here's the late-breaking news (you'll want to be sitting down for this): The mainstream media is ideologically liberal and instinctually hostile to George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy, and the American military.

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Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush administration while heaping more disrepute on the Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops, I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran — after all, I don't want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can" conspiracy.

The false report, according to the New York Times, instigated "the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests" in the Muslim world since...well, since the last virulent, widespread anti-American protests in the Muslim world — particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at least 17 people have been killed.

That's right. The reason for the carnage is said — again and again, by media critics and government officials — to be a false report of Koran desecration. The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.

Is that what we really think?

Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.

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Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim savagery — lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the violence, but offer no judgment about the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most politically correct palaver about the inviolable sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind those verses about annihilating the infidels — the ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy — a development which, there, appears poised to empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor indignities as license to commit murder.

"Minor indignities? How can you say something so callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say it as a member of the real world, not the world of prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for government funding, not murderous uprisings. If someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.

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Some of you are too young to remember (we seem to be stating that a lot lately ... Dammit!) to remember the late '80's when a wonderful piece of GOVERNMENT FUNDED "artwork", produced by a dead pervert, was the subject of great controversy ... It's name? "[Vernacular for urine] Chr-st". There was also another fury over a government bankrolled "art" exhibit in NYC that featured a painting of the Madonna (the Blessed Mother, that is) smeared in excrement.

We were going to post images of these abominations, but better taste prevailed.

Anyhow, while voices were raised in protest, no one rioted. No one was killed. No property was damaged. Indeed, when those offended by such talent-free "art" demanded that such not be paid for with their tax dollars, they were calumnied by the same Blue Staters who excuse the savage behaviour of Mohammedans, as "zealots" and "extremists".

Today, a friend of mine made a statement in email that was clearly blasphemous. Rather than blow him up, I made him aware of the offense I took and asked him to refrain from such blaspheme in the future.

I guess that's the difference between Mohammed and Jesus.