I am so freakin' tired of this Cartoon Wars shite. Clearly the people burning down embassies are Islamic right-wing tossers. Now I hate right-wing tossers on principle, but I'm damned if I'm going to hate Islamic right-wing tossers more than I hate non-Islamic right-wing tossers just because some non-Islamic right-wing tosser tells me to and claims that the Islamic right-wing tossers' actions prove their societies can't comprehend Western Enlightenment values. No-one ever points at non-Islamic right-wing tossers and claims that. Name one person who ever pointed at Andrew Bolt and said he showed Melburnians had turned their backs on the Enlightenment, embraced the Romantic era and now spent their time lounging in gothic follies, smoking opium and having free love with tubercular poets. See, you can't. I reserve the right to hate all right-wing tossers equally. Does this make me a cultural relativist?
Anyway, here's a blogosphere round-up, a healthy mix of refusal to take the righties' framing of this issue seriously and impatience with the stupidity of people who can't tell the difference between freedom of speech and bigoted incitement.
Roy Edroso
lenin with a small l
Sisyphus Shrugged
The Rude Pundit
Ken MacLeod
William Burroughs' Baboon
Dennis Perrin
Worker #3116
The Assparrot
And, of course, Chris Bertram's gorgeous "I'm Offended" post from Crooked Timber, not so much about this fiasco as about all of them.
And now, let us never speak of it again.
See you in another six months.