Selective sensitivity

Some Polish people are pretty upset about a relatively unfunny cartoon that recently appeared in The New Yorker: one boy says to another, "My parents named me Zbigniew because they were drunk." I'm guessing that what the author of this cartoon found funny was this hard to pronounce name - obviously, someone must have been off their rocker to give that name to a child. The trouble is, that's a fairly popular Polish name, so the Polish equivalent of this cartoon would (in translation) read something like, "My parents named me Sean, because they were drunk." Funny? You decide.

The thing wouldn't be worth two seconds of attention, if it weren't for the selective sensitivity adopted by the Western media of late. Do you think the editors of The New Yorker would have published the cartoon, if the name being made fun of was "Obama?" Or "Shlomo?" Or "Mohammed"? Or "Kfume"? I seriously doubt it. Especially, if the cartoon would even so little as hint at something that might be objectionable to the "perpetually offended", i.e. muslims.

It's not the joke itself, but the context of cowardice surrounding it, that is so offensive. This is what happens when you start sacrificing the right of free speech and free expression on the altar of "sensitivity" (read: "fear"). You can't say anything disparaging or funny about women, because it's "sexist". Racial minorities will accuse you of "racism", if you dare to make fun of them. Then come the various ethnic groups. Pretty soon you find that the only people you can make fun of are abstract white men with no religious or ethnic affilliation. That's the world we're already living in. Do you find that funny?

"Terrifying political correctness"

Here is Vaclav Klaus again, commenting on the responses to his interview:

I am getting a lot of reactions from the U.S. to my Friday interview in "Hospodářské noviny" where I talked about the global warming, among other things. Someone has distributed the interview to many internet servers and I have pleased many American non-Al-Gores by my statements because they feel as a minority that is under the pressure of a terrifying political correctness in the U.S. It is crucial to call things by the right name.

The phrase "terrifying political correctness" has struck a nerve with me, because it is terrifying indeed. How it emasculates people! In all my 27 years of living in the socialist Poland I did not see people as afraid to say what's on their minds as I am witnessing in the United States, a country that seems attached to the idea of "free speech" as no other country in the world. On the one hand, you can of course openly curse and vilify this country not only with impunity, but to the applause of many "progressive" Americans. On the other hand, stating that women may be less genetically predisposed for interest in science than men may spell the end of your career, even if you're a president of Harvard, unless you hurry and apologize profusely. Political correctness is worse than secret police, because it gets internalized, so you always carry it with you - the police at least leave you alone from time to time.

Vaclav Klaus on the myth of global warming

Being from Eastern Europe it is impossible not to feel a sense of pride when hearing leaders like Vaclav Klaus bluntly say things that no politician in the West would dare to say. Here is Klaus in a recent interview, speaking about "global warming":

Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.

One can only hope that a decade in the EU will not turn all of of them into spineless worms like so many of their Western counterparts.

War dividends

I know it is going to sound cynical, because there is a lot of human tragedy underneath all this, but the war in Iraq and the mess in the Middle East have produced a number of benefits for the United States (and for the rest of the world, to some extent). To name just the big ones:

1. Re-igniting the ancient feud between the Shia and the Sunni. As long as they keep duking it out amongst themselves, they will have less energy and resources left to dish it out to the Great Satan. Similarly with the other various factions: Hamas vs. Fatah in Palestine, Hizbollah in Lebabon. The rest of the world is much better off when the murderous attention of muslims is focused inward.


2. With Iran now scaring its Sunni neighbors shiiteless (or should it be "shiiteful"?), they are looking to the US as the only stabilizing force capable of keeping the deranged Iranian leadership in check. The Europeans have proved (yet again) completely helpless, and Bush is sending signal after signal that he's not going to lift a finger against Iran - one can only imagine the sense of vulnerability of countries like Saudi Arabia.


3. The fairly dramatic rise in oil prices apparently had negligible effect on the US economy, which is remarkably strong. While the higher prices were a huge windfall to the oil-producing countries, they also - and more importantly - demonstrated that the global economy is not as vulnerable to disruption coming from the Middle East as it appeared to be in the seventies. If the interest in alternative energy sources is sustained and leads to technological innovation and consumer adoption, this vulnerability will be reduced even further, to the point when (as Spengler points out in his piece), sudden disappearance of the entire Middle East may well go unnoticed.


4. If Abu Ghraib was such a public relations nightmare for the United States, imagine what the relentless carnage unleashed on innocent civilians by assorted islamic fanatics must be doing to their image in the world, including the so-called "Arab street". One would have to be completely brain dead not to feel a profound cognitive and emotional distress upon being relentlessly bombarded by news of muslims slaughtering other muslims by busload, while the "infidels" are emerging relatively unscathed from the bloodbath.


5. The power that the United States now solely wields on the global stage only increased, with many countries - including the enemies of the US - now realizing what mayhem would be unleashed if the only superpower were to disengage from the world. If we withdrew from Iraq next week, the brutal slaughter that would engulf that country would be on par with the Rwandan genocide.

Hopeless but not serious

A blunt, honest look at the irrelevance of the Middle East's instability for the rest of the world:

 "The economic significance of the Shi'ites of Iraq and Lebanon is negligible; the Palestinians represent a net drain on the world economy, as consumers of subsidies. If space aliens were to transport all of them to another planet Tuesday next, world markets would not notice." (Spengler in Asia Times)

72 virgins

This is clever and hilarious: 72 Virgins by Steve Martin. My favorites:

Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry!

Virgin No. 9: It was a garlic-and-onion pizza. Why?

Virgin No. 10: . . . so I see Heath, and he goes, “Like, what are you doing here?,” and I go, “I’m hangin’ out,” so he goes, “Like, what?” . . . 

Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?

Virgin No. 16: Even I know that’s tiny.

Virgin No. 17: “Do it”? Meaning what?

Virgin No. 30: You are in?

Virgin No. 38: I’m Zania, from the planet Xeron. My vagina is on my foot.

Virgin No. 39: It’s a lesion, and, no, I don’t know what kind.

Virgin No. 45: When you’re done, you should really check out how cool this ceiling is.

Virgin No. 56: I think I found it. Is that it? Oh. Is this it? Oh, this must be it. No?

Virgin No. 58: Those are my testicles.

A new low

Just when you thought that Western cowardice vis-a-vis islam couldn't get any worse, along comes YouTube and shows that it is possible to set a new low:

An atheist commentator, Nick Gisburne, has been posting videos presenting his logical arguments against Christianity, but when he tried the same with islam, YouTube removed his video and... canceled his account. His "offense" wasn't even on par with the famous Dutch cartoons - he wasn't openly ridiculing islam or its holy cows, he was merely quoting from quran to make a point. Of course, as a private company, YouTube has the right to say what can or can not be posted on its servers - but isn't their selectiveness at least a little suspicious? Would they be showing the same amount of "sensitivity" toward Christianity, if Christians went on a rampage every time somebody in the West said something "disparaging" about their religion? (Moslems slaughtering other moslems and blowing up their mosques apparently isn't offensive enough to cause mass demonstrations, but that's another story.) Is it just a coincidence that YouTube is now owned by Google, the same spineless company that meekly agreed to carry water for Chinese censors??