James Poniewozik is so wrong.
Writing about the terrible attack on the headquarters of the
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which (at this writing) 12 people
have been killed, Poniewozik writing for TIME says this:
Maybe you would never have read Charlie Hebdo or seen The
Interview. Maybe you think mocking beloved religious figures, or fictionally
blowing up the head of a living world leader, is in poor taste. That’s fine;
decent people can lawfully criticize speech and still hate it being attacked
unlawfully.
That’s fine; I agree with him one hundred percent.
But then he starts to get a little wobbly:
But if you care about freedom, you don’t always have the
luxury of defending monumental art. If speech rights only protected polite
comments that everyone could agree with, we wouldn’t need them.
If I care about freedom? Why yes I do. But I also care about
treating others with kindness. Treating others as I wish they would treat me. I
also care about not deliberately poking people in the eye just to see what
happens.
Then he writes the horrible sentence:
And no matter who you are or what you like, these attacks
are also attacks on you.
No, they’re not.
Don’t get me wrong: This attack is beyond deplorable. If you
dislike what someone writes or draws about something you believe in, the answer
is not to barge in with ski masks and guns blazing. That’s where Poniewozik and
I agree.
But saying these attacks are against me is a false flag.
It’s the same false flag many used to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
that spawned this ISIS crisis in the first place. No, this attack is against a
magazine that has constantly thrown oil on the fire, doing so rightly behind
the protection of free speech, as Poniewozik writes. It's not against me. Or the West. Or any other of the hobgoblins form the long list of terrorist "they-made-me-do-it" targets. If I happened to be
foolish enough to wander into ISIS territory, I would be a target.
I’m not that headstrong.
It’s true – we have the right to say anything we want. But
we have the responsibility, once in a while, to consider whether the right we
have to say whatever we want ought to be tempered by the thought: Should I say
whatever damnfool thing pops into my head?
You don’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only
kidding, as TMBG sings. And there has to be a seed of racism, a seed of
xenophobia, that spurs hatred, even hatred that’s legally and rightfully
protected by any rights of free speech.
And I have to believe that Poniewozik’s Defense would not be
applied equally. Terry Jones’ showing of a low-budget film that depicts the
prophet Mohammed as a “thuggish womanizer” and who promoted Sept. 11, 2010, as
“Burn a Koran Day” could also rightly hide his hateful message behind any free
speech amendment, but you certainly don’t hear the likes of Poniewozik
defending him, do you? Nor the Westboro Baptist Church and their anti-muslim
and anit-flavor-of-the-week whatever’s flown up their nostrils.
I call it the Myrna Minkoff Defense, named after the
character from John Kennedy Toole’s novel “A Confederacy of Dunces,” in which
the character Myrna Minkoff is thrilled with a message she believes will save
society – until she discovers it’s from a pamphlet written by the Ku Klux Klan.
She’s embarrassed by the “right message, but from the wrong people.”
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