Hatemail Vol. 1: Publicity Stuntsmen

Reason.com, that bastion of libertarian bullshit, published an editorial on free speech and the importance of insulting Islam.  The writer of the article relates an anecdote in which poet Alan Ginsburg asked a Muslim cabbie if the fatwa death sentence against Salman Rushdie was justified.  When the cabbie said yes, that an insult to Islam warrants an execution, Ginsburg yelled "Then I shit on your religion!"  

In light of the failed Times Square bombing, which may have been targeting Viacom (the parent company of anti-Muslim blasphemers South Park), the writer of the article asks "why won’t anyone say in public what Ginsberg said in the back seat of that cab? If Islam justifies, or is understood by millions of Muslims to justify, setting off a bomb in Times Square, then I shit on Islam."  

I thought I'd take this as an opportunity for Trivial Pursuit: The Blog to launch a new series, in which I post (selected works of) the (jealousy-fueled?) hate-mail I send to professional writers.  In this case, that writer is Mark Goldblatt, professor of Bible Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, a position that may be the academic form of a double negative (where two stupid things cancel each other out to make something smart), but in his case, it's more likely that it merely forms something doubly stupid.  This makes me regret sending him the following, which actually dignifies his editorial with a serious response:

Hi Mark Goldblatt,

I want to pick a fight with you.  I posted the following on the Reason comments thread, as well as on my own personal blog. 

http://trivialpursuittheblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/hatemail-vol-1-publicity-stuntsmen.html

What's the point of shitting on all of Islam when its only a small subsection who deserve it? That's the type of indiscriminate attack that characterizes terrorists like Shahzad.

Ginsburg was a poet, who understood how to choose his words. When he bitched out that cabbie, saying "I shit on Islam", he was targeting that cabbie specifically and that cabbie alone. He was saying to that one guy, if those are really your perverted beliefs, you've succeeded in turning me against the religion you hold so highly.

Now the writer of the article asks, "Why won’t anyone say in public what Ginsberg said in the back seat of that cab?" Because the writer is not the poet that Ginsburg was, because the writer is not even much of a writer, he doesn't understand that words need to be chosen carefully, they need to be suited for their specific context, and saying "I shit on Islam" is not appropriate for a public forum, unless you want to unnecessarily insult the majority of Muslims, who wince at the actions of bin Laden and Shahzad.

There's nothing brave about broadcasting "I shit on Islam", and there's nothing noble about depicting Mohammed and violating Muslim cultural norms just for the sake of insulting their religion. Those are indiscriminate attacks, and as many have pointed out, they provoke mostly indiscriminate responses. Theo van Gogh was a martyr, but so were the countless innocent bystanders who were collateral damage of other retaliations. A vast majority of these victims had nothing to do with the words or images that sparked the response; meanwhile, the instigators have escaped mostly unscathed, but not without benefits to their public profiles.

The writer asks why more people haven't taken a broadsword to Islam. Well South Park did, and unless you're autistic, Lawrence O'Donnell obviously did as well. There's nothing uniquely courageous about the writer of this article, who confuses a publicity a stunt with an act of bravery.  If anything distinguishes him its that he's a bit classless and his thinking is rather imprecise; God willing, the terrorists won't be as imprecise if, God forbid, they choose to retaliate.

I await your response,
Ken Drinkwater

 Reason's slogan is "Free Minds and Free Markets", which is a good summation of Libertarians:  too intellectually vain to be conservatives, too greedy to be liberals.  Of course, the Libertarians will say that this is an oversimplification, that liberals, in addition to being anti-corporate, can also be bad on civil liberties.  This is true to an extent, but it would be hard to base an entire magazine around smoking bans and the right to carry Uzis.

And as much as they believe in the power of the free market, this is the only magazine that has to adopt the NPR model and ask its readers for "tax-deductible" donations.  Perhaps though, this is a test-run of their theory that if you people think higher taxes will help society, you can go ahead and volunteer your own damn money.