Via email,
friend Spartacus and I are engaged in two parallel online tirades – he's been
singing lead, and I'll take up a bit of a harmony-vocal, but then I swing into
counterpoint before he and I clear our throats and sing our tunes a little more
clearly. We never hit all the same notes; and generally this makes for good
music, though (by the nature of music as such) it can also quickly degrade into
a horrid, jarring cacophony.
The first of
our joint tirades began with a brief email he sent me late this week:
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:06 PM
Subject: Provocative Video?
Subject: Provocative Video?
The danger is not that a
particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. -- Lord
Acton
The worm
looked like it was worth a nibble, so I checked it out. And let me propose a
neologism: videtorial. This is an editorial comment/rant
disseminated via video, generally through email, or by YouTube and its cousins.
So if you hear anybody use the word "videtorial", you heard it first
here, folks. Royalties not necessary, but thanks for the kind offer. (Whoops;
the word's already been coined – Google pulls up "about 271"
instances of its use out there. Oh, well; I've got others.)
And speaking
of royalty: the above link takes you to a videtorial videorecorded by an
interesting British chap by name of Pat
Condell, Apparently he's an iconoclastic standup comedian –
in the true, historical sense of iconoclasm, in fact.
His website's tagline reads: "Hi, I'm Pat Condell. I don't respect
your beliefs and I don't care if you're offended. Cheers." Some
of his comments are downright funny to me, especially most of his Rosco
the Pig cartoons.
But he also
puts credence in the much ballyhooed claim that the Vatican was a Nazi
collaborator up to and during World War II. I want to address that in another
blog – this ludicrous assertion is demonstrably untrue (despite the
photograph Condell offers out of any context, showing a pair of smiling
cardinals shaking hands with Hitler), and walks along the same intolerant path
as that strode by the Holocaust-deniers. Again, though, that is too big an
issue for this current tirade – I'll get to it; don't worry.
Let's go
back to Condell's video. In case it gets pulled down, I'm tacking its full text
down on the bottom of this posting, after Spartacus and I remark on it a bit.
Mr. Condell's focus is on the handful of vociferous, incendiary, jihadist brand
of radical Islamic clerics, and their brain-dead followers, who are causing
much consternation in various countries – in the UK, in this instance. Since
they get the lion's share of the press coverage on present-day Muslims, it's
easy for superficial people (of all levels of intelligence) to make the shallow
intuitive leap that these represent all of Islam.
I wrote back
to Spartacus that same evening:
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:16 PM
Yes, provocative video – thanks.
Most of the videtorial is well reasoned, and the gentleman has a
lovely accent, and delivers quite well. (And loses points for his one utterance
of a no-no word.) But that simply doesn't fully hide the wide tarbrush he's
using.
What if we replace some of his occurrences of "Muslims"
with, say, "Blacks"? Or "Hispanics"? How about
"women"? Blood bubbling over now?
It's the old, old argument of condemning the whole group due to a
loud (but dangerous, yes) minority within it.
I’m thinking about tracking down his text, or even transcribing
the barmy thing myself, and posting a quick rail about it. Hmm…
Might just send it over to Anon
E. Mouse first, and
see how quickly she and her NRA-saluting buddies jump into their
gunrack-adorned pickups and head over to the nearest mosque – I believe there
is one within half an hour of her home, in fact.
Now if you can excuse me, I need to go f!reb0mb a synagogue.
Regards,
David Puke
My signoff
is, of course, a reference to America's favorite white supremacist, David
Duke. And if you do, yourself, have occasional inclinations
toward superficiality, let me assure you that I did not send the link to
my conservative friend, Ms. Mouse, whom I love dearly and whom I've
respectfully skewered here for her convictions. ("Convictions make convicts", quoth Robert Anton Wilson.
It's a great line, but I disagree.) And of course I was not at all serious
about the synagogue!
I've
expounded here before on the issue of jihadism vs. true Islam – and though I'm
Catholic, I do feel I have an understanding of, and some educated feel for,
Islam that Mr. Pat Condell lacks. Here are a couple instances where I've tried
(likely futilely) to straighten out some folks' attitudinal myopia on Islam;
let me not repeat myself:
http://1mt2mb.blogspot.com/2007/03/soul-survival-continued-iffy-on-biffi.html (about
three quarters of the way down)
…except to
point out that Condell, in his videtorial, is subtexting about a lack of
tolerance in the more radical faction of the UK's Islamic community… yet
himself shows no tolerance for these folks.
Just one
example of his own intolerance (lurking under calm, smiling face and cultivated
accent) is his whine on Muslim English women wearing the niqab, or veil covering the face.
How, sir, does this differ from our Jewish cousins (including one of my
brothers-in-law) wearing a yarmulke? Do you know any Christian men or women who
wear crosses/crucifixes? Wiccans and their star?
Why do you draw the line here if the woman chooses voluntarily to wear it?
He leads off
with the smug, assuring statement that "here
in the UK, religion was always pretty dormant until Muslims came along". I
suppose he's forgotten about wholesale purge and persecution
of Catholics under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. In the UK, religion
was at times anything but dormant.
This puts me
in mind of an animated scene in Pink Floyd's "The Wall" film, where a
Union
Jack is standing proudly above a war-ravaged countryside.
Then the diagonals drop off, piece by piece, and we're left with a stark white
cross, standing there rigidly on the ruined landscape and leaking blood, which
trickles into a dirty gutter-grate. I couldn't find an online image, but was
able to create this one…
…from a chilling video, which includes that sequence, from the fillm. While digging around on the 'net, I also happened on this image, which is even more frightening - and likely an abomination to nearly every Brit walking this Earth; I don't blame them.
While we're
abominating, here's the text of Pat Condell's videtorial. (I'm using British
spelling, and a modicum of British punctuation as well… except I really do
prefer to use commas.) Please note: I'm posting this to inform,
but most certainly not to endorse. I support the right of individuals to
express their opinions peacefully (which he has done), and other individuals to
express their own counterpoints just as peacefully, which I've done.
Hi. I'd like to say a few words
about Islam — if I may.
Now, here in the UK, religion was
always pretty dormant until Muslims came along and started burning books and
passing death sentences and generally demanding special treatment for no good
reason. But they've shown everybody else what can be achieved by bullying and
intimidation, so now, every crackpot in the country feels entitled to respect
for their precious beliefs — beliefs often lifted wholesale from the ramblings
of some ancient desert nomad with a psychological disorder. It does seem quite
ironic to me, that the very people who have clearly made no attempt to think
for themselves are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their
"ideas".
But some Muslims go further than
this and claim that they are being victimized in British society. But I don't
really believe that's true. I do think a lot of people are getting fed up with hearing
about Muslims all the time, and they wish that Muslims would shut up and get on
with their lives, instead of constantly bellyaching about nothing — but that's
not the same as being victimized.
But because we live in a liberal
democracy, and therefore have certain double standards to maintain, any
criticism of Islam, or of Muslims, always draws the immediate accusation of
"Islamophobia": a dishonest word, which seeks to portray legitimate
comment as some kind of hate crime — when the truth is that Islam has a chip on
its shoulder the size of a mosque, and it looks to take offence at every
opportunity. Some Muslims, it seems, are almost permanently offended about
something or other, and yet you never hear a peep out of any of these people
when some young Muslim girl is murdered for bringing dishonour upon her insane
family. Suddenly, everyone's looking at the floor, then.
They keep telling us that Islam is a
religion of peace, but all the evidence points to a religion of war. Its holy
book urges Muslims to conquer the world and subjugate everyone to the rule of
God.
If Islam had its way, elections
would become a thing of the past, and the rest of us would be living in
the past, for the foreseeable future. And some people are very keen to bring
this situation about — especially the loud-mouthed, rabble-rousing Islamic
clerics, who we always hear praising the suicide bombers as "glorious
martyrs".
And yet, curiously, you never hear
about any of these enthusiasts blowing themselves up for the glory of
God; they are always very keen to delegate that particular honour —
despite the guarantee of all those luscious virgins waiting for them in Heaven;
these guys are so selfless that they can always find somebody more
deserving.
Now of course, the whole seventy-two
virgins scenario has become something of a comedy staple, and with good reason.
But it does have one serious problem, and that is that the virgins are likely
to be good, wholesome Islamic virgins, because there won't be any Infidel
riffraff in Heaven. So, presumably they'll have brothers and cousins and uncles
who are all determined to defend their honour by killing anyone who makes eye
contact with them.
They haven't really thought this
whole thing through, it seems to me. For this, they blow themselves up?
Wouldn't it be easier just to get an inflatable woman and blow her up?
And then if one of your friends happens to glance at her with lustful eyes,
why, you can simply stone her to death and get another one, in the usual way.
Also, I think, Muslim women in
Britain who cover their faces are mentally ill. Now, I realize that in some
parts of the world women don't actually have any choice in this matter,
governed as they are by primitive pigs, whose only achievement in life is to be
born with a penis in one hand and a Koran in the other. But it just seems to me
that if God had intended you to cover your face, then, in His wisdom he would
have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose. Of course, if it gave
you any sexual pleasure, it would have to be removed. That goes without
saying.
But I don't want to be too hard on
Islam, here, for two reasons. Firstly, because I don't want to be murdered by
some hysterical, self-righteous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppet with sh!t
for brains. And secondly, I think we do need to make allowances for Islam,
because we have to remember it is quite a young religion. So, maybe right now
it's just going through a "difficult age" — a little headstrong, full
of itself, thinks it knows all the answers. But, I'm sure it will learn.
I think years from now, a lot of
intelligent Muslims will be looking back at all this mediaevalism and jihad
nonsense with embarrassment and shame — like the Germans do with the Nazis. And
maybe then we can all have a good laugh about it.
But in the meantime, I think that
any religion that demands earthly vengeance, and retribution, for any reason,
is not really a religion at all, but an illness, and should be treated as such.
Peace. And I mean that most
sincerely.
Followup: a comment came through a year and a half later:
Sujit Patwardhan Feb 21, 2009
Absolutely hilarious and had me laughing out loud. You leave me asking for MORE!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely hilarious and had me laughing out loud. You leave me asking for MORE!!!!!!!!!
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