Culture Briefs

Muhammad drawing

“The point behind Everybody Draw Muhammed Day is not about sensitivities. It’s not about recklessly and needlessly and unemotionally insulting someone. It’s about saying to Muslims: This is 2010. You’re entitled to be offended and even get angry if someone insults your religion. You’re entitled to call them terrible names and damn them to hell. You’re entitled to curse them and (if you feel it’s productive) take an eye for a metaphorical eye by similarly insulting their religion. But you’re not entitled to kill people because of that anger. …

“I will once again quote Mark Steyn and say that he put it better than I ever could have, regarding the original cartoons in the Danish newspaper: The minute there were multimillion-dollar bounties on those cartoonists’ heads, The Times of London and Le Monde and The Washington Post and all the rest should have said ’this Thursday we’re all publishing all the cartoons. If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you’ll have to kill us all.’ …

“For me, drawing a picture of Muhammed today is not about poking a stick in the Muslim Community’s eye. It’s not about nakedly and gratuitously insulting people because I can. It’s about throwing oneself on a hand-grenade along with thousands (hopefully) of others so that the jihadists and radical Islamists see that they can’t kill us all. This is our chance to be Daniel Pearl, our chance to be Theo Van Gogh, our chance to be Lars Vilks. They cannot kill us all.”

- “Colorado Patriot” writing on “A Day That Will Change the (Muslim) World?” on May 20 at Gay Patriot

For me but not thee

“Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, has a problem. He’s running for the U.S. Senate, and he’s been caught on video implying falsely that he served in Vietnam. He’d like your understanding as he explains that he simply ’misspoke’ about his service. He’d like you to give him a break. But Blumenthal has never given anyone a break. He has made a career out of holding others to the strictest standards of truth - and mercilessly prosecuting them when they fall short. … Let’s look at the rules he has enforced on others over the last year or so and see how his rebuttals compare. …

“Blurring is lying. Last fall, Blumenthal launched an investigation of food companies that put a “Smart Choices” logo on their products. He called the labels ’potentially misleading’ and decried marketing gimmicks that ’blur or block the truth.’ Though the labels made no explicit claims, he protested that they ’misguided’ the public and sowed ’confusion.’ He pledged to teach companies, through his investigation, that ’labeling must be completely truthful and accurate without hype or spin.’ And he depicted the industry in the harshest terms: ’Big Food has been feeding big lies to consumers about nutritional value.’ Today, Blumenthal said he merely ’misspoke’ about his service, using the wrong preposition in a small and ’unintentional’ oversight.”

- William Saletan, writing on “The Blumenthal Rules” on May 18 at Slate

All alone

“I’m not trying to be ironic. I’m not trying to be proud. I’m not even trying to score points with the ladies. And I’m certainly not apologizing. I’m just saying I’m a (straight) man, I’ve seen and enjoyed all of ’Sex and the City,’ dug the movie and I’m psyched for the sequel. And I feel like I’m the only one.

“I sometimes wish I could write off the fashiony, gossipy adventures of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte as a guilty pleasure, but in truth I spend more time shrugging my shoulders, misunderstanding why guys avoid the show the way they avoid buying tampons or watching ’The Bachelorette.’ …

“It was like finding my sister’s Cosmopolitan (the magazine, not the Carrie-and-co-endorsed cocktail), making sure no one was looking and pawing through pages from the minds of women, for women. It was like that, only much more entertaining, less obsessed with 75 boilerplate bedroom tips and with nudity galore.”

- Zach Dionne, “I’m a Guy and I Love ’Sex and the City.’ All Of It,” on May 20 at Pop Eater