Andy’s whereIstand Blog

Yeah, though I love their work, the street cred of the filthily rich South Park Duo is running thin. Like Eninem, Stone and Parker have capitalized on controversy, and not that the bounds of the freedom of speech don’t need to be constantly pushed, nor do I think Muslims have the right to riot and turn violent because one of their tenets isn’t respected by outsiders. Rename whatever pastry you want but let’s not destroy things:

Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the creators of "South Park" skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon’s most recent episode.

The comedy — in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians — instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag.

In an elaborately constructed two-part episode of their Peabody Award-winning cartoon, "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper’s publishing of caricatures of Mohammed. Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous.

When the cartoons were reprinted in newspapers worldwide in January and February, it sparked a wave of protests primarily in Islamic countries.

Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Mohammed, according to a person close to the show who didn’t want to be identified because of the issue’s sensitivity.

The network’s decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said.

A frequent "South Park" critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored.

"The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central — that’s their decision not to show the image of Mohammed or not — it’s Parker and Stone," he said. "Like little whores, they’ll sit there and grab the bucks. They’ll sit there and they’ll whine and they’ll take their shot at Jesus. That’s their stock in trade."

It’s the second run-in over religion in a few months for the satirists. Comedy Central pulled a March rerun of a "South Park" episode that mocked Scientologists. Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist who voiced the Chef character on the show, resigned in protest over the episode.

Yeah I’m pretty sure calling anyone a hypocrite in this sitch is the pot calling the kettle and several other wrought-iron cooking utensils black.

This has been Andy D.

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Oh Billionaires and their quarrels:

California billionaire Ron Burkle penned a personal letter to Rubert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., which owns the New York Post.

The letter set in motion a chain of events that would trigger an unprecedented scandal in journalism, devastate the Post and rock its franchise column.

The salutation was simply "Rupert" and Burkle called him a friend, signing "Best Regards, Ron."

By turns, frank and colloquial, Burkle’s point was still crystal-clear: He was "getting screwed" by Page Six, the Post’s lead gossip column.

"I’m not quite sure what to do when your paper keeps writing things about me that are not true," he said, citing reports that he was buying Elite Models Management for former President Bill Clinton to run, owned shares of Barnes & Noble, and leased a yacht for Clinton and Michael Jackson.

"I hate to bother you with this; but at the end of the day, it is your newspaper," Burkle concluded.

Increasingly frustrated as more false items about him appeared in Page Six, Burkle had no response from Murdoch. A Post editor’s promise that Burkle’s complaints would be addressed was an empty one.

False reports about Burkle’s romantic life continued to appear in the column.

Boo hoo hoo, write about it on your Myspace blog.

This has been Andy D.

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Nick rightly referred to this article in the Washington Post:

The Bush administration yesterday condemned the violent response to European cartoons mocking Islam and accused Iran and Syria of exploiting the international controversy to incite unrest and protests in the Middle East.

"I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday. "The world ought to call them on it."

A few hours earlier, at a White House ceremony with Jordan’s King Abdullah, President Bush rejected the violence but not the cartoons that incited bloody protests from Afghanistan to Denmark, where the drawings first appeared. "We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press," Bush said.

Bush and Rice, making their first public remarks on the growing worldwide controversy, highlighted a shift in White House strategy to focusing on the killings and destruction during Muslim protests in several nations — in contrast to earlier statements that included criticism of the provocative drawings. Administration officials said Bush does not want a debate over free speech to diminish or deflect attention from the U.S. condemnation of the violence.

It’s weird to agree with Bush Corp., but I figure no one can be wrong ALL the time. Of course this is why I’m divided against myself. This is also the benefit of a secular society that values free press over dogmatic religious government influence. Of course, our own press has abstained from exercising its freedom as Andrew Sullivan observes:

I have no way to know for sure but I have to believe that the New York Times’ decision to refrain from publishing the cartoons in some way reflects the heroic way the city has put forward its tolerance as the best answer to the mass murder in our midst. You may see it as a sellout, a craven surrender to the intimidation of the extremists, but I prefer to see it as a concession (and a small one at that), one that will empower moderate Muslims, especially in the West, to grasp that we do respect their religion and its teachings of peace and love, even as we confront a dangerous minority’s attempts to use it to spark a civilizational war.

We all do realize, however, that American Journalism is still Yellow Journalism right? I’m sure they’ll sensationalize the fact that they haven’t run the cartoons, and make that a story, because why not?

This has been Andy D.

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• nick
• Donovan
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Perhaps this belongs in Middle Eastern Politics, but I’ll keep it here anyway. I actually Did miss Donovan’s post on this last week, so, sorry for that, but now it’s happened - people have died over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. As CNN reports:

Tens of thousands of Muslims around the world have staged new rounds of protests — some resulting in deaths — over published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Afghan police fired Monday on about 2,000 protesters who tried to enter Bagram Airbase, a U.S. base north of Kabul, The Associated Press reported.

Two protesters were killed and 13 others injured, Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief, was quoted as saying. Eight of those injured were police, he said.

The protests came as Iran announced it had cut off all trade ties with Denmark.

A report on the state-run news agency IRNA said Iranian Commerce Minister Massoud Mirkazemi stopped trade with Denmark as the government’s response to the cartoons.

These are not just a bunch of religious militants, if reports are to be believed, these are a BUNCH of religious militants. Thousands of them. Who actually care what a Danish Newspaper thinks of their prophet. As Donovan says:

The Danish cartoon does not "spark the fire of Muslim ire" - it plays into the hands of various Muslim activists, looking for opportunities to assert their power in various Muslim societies.

The examination of the "other," the main concern of Anthropology actually serves not to actually define those different from us, but shows exactly how we are by seeing how we are different from some distance, inevitably showing how our own society and cultures function. This has been apparent since Malinowski and Mead. The only assumption made to begin with is that there are people who are doing things differently than us in this world, but upon examination, when the ethnography ends, it concludes that all the description of what others are doing, really only serves to show what we are doing, and what we are doing does. Not to mention that there are more differences within perceived groups than between groups.

That said. What do we see here? Donovan already pointed out the similarity with the right in this country railing against flag burning.

Well the right still applies in this lesson - the religious right in our own country could be seen as similar to the religious militants of the Muslim World. The galvanized base of the right here at home could be seen to react similarly - would a domestic protest over abortion or same-sex-marriage or other popular issues the religious entangle themselves in ever prove this widely fatal? I don’t think so. But maybe. Abortion clinics have been bombed before. As it stands we still have some secularist sentiments regarding freedom of press, speech, and assembly - which is why sacrilegious speech is protected.

Libel, obscenity, fighting words are not protected, but are constantly at stake in the judicial reading of the law. There certainly isn’t enough to make our citizens riot like this.

What these Muslim countries have lodged against Denmark are not just protests of the newspaper therein, but are protests of the country’s free press. This is perhaps as Donovan says just a vocal minority of militants, kind of like the religious right (purposefully undefined here) in this country, or hell even the constantly-protesting Greens - whomever, but in a moment of cultural relativism, we cannot reflect upon our press, in our country with our values what the Muslim world - where religion and government are so conflated that the two are even more difficult to separate than Christianity is here with our government - is now trying attack other countries rights to publish.

Blood libel indeed. People have died for it now, and I’m pretty sure causing death and violence is a greater sin in all religions than breaking a suped-up version of the first and second commandments.

In my book, this is just one more mark against religion in the human condition and one more mark for the benefits secularism in polities.

This has been Andy D,

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• Donovan
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Just as some conjecture that the Arab Media could usurp the sinking US Media as far as relevance goes in the world, others are seeing Danish cartoons depicting Muslims and thereby pissing them off. I agree with Slate on this issue:

there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jylland Postens out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.

Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these.

But to attack others for not abstaining is patently intolerant and generally horrible.

This has been Andy D.

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The word of the year for 2005 is "Truthiness"

According to a panel of linguists in New Mexico, Truthiness best reflect 2005. I’d say Cheney, Bush, Bill O’Reilly, DeLay et al. would agree.

"The national argument right now is, one, who’s got the truth and, two, who’s got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we’re not going make much progress."

"Katrinagate" and "Jump the Couch" (from Tom Cruise losing it on Oprah) are honorable mentions. And the most useful word is podcast.

This has been Andy D, feeling Cruisazy.

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Did anyone catch Bill O’Reilly on Letterman the other night? It takes one of the nicest guys in showbiz to bring the shitstorm to Bill. In fact is there a comedo-pundit alive who hasn’t totally served O’Reilly? Maybe Jon Stewart, but just because O’Reilly wouldn’t brave the Daily Show.

Well you can read a transcript of the smack down at this blog and see a clip of the show here.

Towing the line is just not worth being on the same side as this guy.

This has been Andy D 

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Now I know I quote the NYT way too much, but secretly I just read the pentacle of Western Journalism and secretly wait for them to mess up, and they did:

"12 Miners Found Alive 41 Hours After Explosion" says it all. Or rather the addendum that instead of 12 of the 13 miners found that only one of them was alive says it all. It’s a good thing that media coverage is a process instead of a definitive voice in our culture.

And the inevitable happens: the story becomes the story in blogworld.

The NYT wasn’t only at fault, it was everyone and their fact checkers.

This is actually why blogs exist. Up with the fifth and sixth estates!

This has been Andy D.

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