TIPSY TRENDING TOPICS: ANN COULTER EBOLA ARE MEANT TO BE
Watch Ben lay it down for you. Every ridiculous Ann Coulter thought on Ebola. Check out the rest of our coverage on http://pressroomvip.com/
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TIPSY TRENDING TOPICS: ANN COULTER & EBOLA ARE MEANT TO BE - Video
Ann Coulter: Fighting Terrorism While Politically Correct?
Uploaded under "Fair Use" provisions for discussion and commentary at http://PolitiBrew.com 1-10-15...11:52 AM EST.
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Ann Coulter: Fighting Terrorism While Politically Correct? - Video
Ann Coulter: The Left Harrasses Black Conservatives
Then they complain there is not enough Black Republicans. Leftist policies wipe out the middle class so they can minister to the poor and promise more food s...
By: GooberTheUncouth
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Ann Coulter: The Left Harrasses Black Conservatives - Video
Twice a day, a stopped clock is right, right? Sometimes I even find something laudable in what David Brooks writes. Today, for example, I agree withhis conclusionbut his argument is so bizarre that I can only surmise he got to a truththrough the turning of the earth.
As Iwroteyesterday, I am moving quickly toward a position of free-speech absolutism, something at odds to the prevailing attitude among college and university administrations today. Its a position that Brooks also claims. He, too, grabs theCharlie Hebdomoment, as I did, to make a point against speech codes on campus.
Thats all well and good. Its how he gets there that I find bizarre. And patronizing.
Brooks divides us into those at the adult table (himself) and those at the kiddie table:
The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids table.
Huh? I am reminded ofthe ten-year-old who dresses in a suit, foldsThe New York Timesunder his arm, and expects to be treated as an adult.
Lets look a little at what Brooks is saying: The adults, the assumption goes, are the ones who are right, who know what they are doing. They are the elite, the people who should be making the decisions. That the kids sometimes make fun of them is simply something that comes with the territory. It should be toleratedbut not encouraged.
But those Brooks imagines as adults are also the people whose actions are destroying our worldmuch more that even the most despicable of terrorists. Their riches come through the impoverishment of others, their successes through the destruction of their competitors. The destructiveness of their actions is covered by the assumption of mannersbut that does not excuse them. Social skills do not replace morality. Brooks, though, concludes that theCharlie Hebdoattackshould remind us to be legally tolerant toward offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating.
Surebut Brooks we is a self-defining elite patronizing the rest. Though he mentions only Coulter and Maher (trying for that tired and false balance between left and right), Brooks relegates to the kiddie table almost all of the people Id rather sit with, the people who are real adults, not simply those dressed up in grown-up clothes. Here are just a few:
Charlie Chaplin Stephen Colbert Joseph Heller Aldous Huxley Franois Rabelais Jon Stewart Jonathan Swift Kurt Vonnegut Evelyn Waugh
Originally posted here:
David Brooks has a Bill Maher problem: More smug, sanctimonious nonsense from NYTs laziest columnist
If gunmen hadnt attacked the offices ofCharlie Hebdotoday, killing 12 people (including the provocative magazines editor-in-chief), the conflict over Islamsplacein Europe would still have been Pariss topic one. There were yesterdays rallies in Germanyto talk about, some in sympathy with Frances anti-immigrant National Front, but alsothepublication of the sixth novel bynotoriousanti-Muslim provocateur Michel Houellebecq, out today. A caricature ofHouellebecqgracesCharlie Hebdosnew cover, after all.
The predictions of the sorcerer Houellebecq, reads the headline, beside an unflattering drawing of the author smoking in a magicians outfit. In 2015, I lose my teeth, reads one speech bubble. In 2022, I observe Ramadan. The novel in question,Soumission (Submission), has a plot even more tendentious than those of Houellebecq past. In 2022, the National Fronts Marine Le Pen runs for prime minister against a purportedly moderate Muslim candidate; French leftists side with the latter. The next day, Sharia law, more or less. The narrator, already recanting his atheism, picks up Islam (enticed by the polygamy). The rest of Europe follows, it seems, fashioning a caliphate in the image of the Roman Empire.
No one yet knows (though many have speculated) whether the publication ofSoumissionhad anything to do with the attack, but the author and Islam have alonghistory. The stupidest of all religions, heoncecalled it in an interview a quote that got him charged in 2002 with inciting religious hatred (though a Paris court later dropped the charge).
France has a long love-hate relationship with Houellebecq, who seems to ratelibertaboveegalit(and ignorefraternitcompletely). The novel that precipitated his incendiary interviews was 2001sPlatform, wherein a narrator finds blissful escape in Thai sex trafficking before a terrorist massacre ends the reverie. Like other of his novels (and likeCharlie Hebdo), it rode the French fault line between religious tolerance and cultural pride not only in the nationalistic sense but in a bedrock secularism that led to the banning of the burqa. Houellebecq was too talented a novelist to dismiss and too impulsively contrarian to pigeonhole. He was also, at least in France, too famous to ignore Norman Mailer with a curmudgeonly dash of Jonathan Franzen and the occasional pinch of Ann Coulter. There was always, for the French, something to love and something to hate. In 2010, he was finally awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt for the relatively tameThe Map and the Territory. That said, he was also accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia, and the novel did contain a miserable character named Michel Houellebecq, who was brutally murdered.
Soumissionleaked extensively online in recent days, and Houellebecq has already peppered French media with interviews. He made many of the same talking points in a long (and rather hostile)English-languageexclusive withThe Paris Reviewthis week, answering the interviewers accusations that he was stoking shallow controversy and scaremongering. Yes, perhaps, he said. Yes, the book has a scary side. I use scare tactics. He admitted his scenario wasnt very realistic, but envisioned a more gradual Islamist takeover.As it happens, the threat of a takeover like that is the subject of another book, by another novelist-provocateur, Eric Zemmour this one a work of polemic nonfiction about the decline of traditional European values that has been on the best-seller lists for months. Its calledThe French Suicide.
Unlike Zemmour,Houellebecqisnta big fan of the West, either. Look, the Enlightenment is dead, may it rest in peace, he said, announcing that hed also forsaken atheism and was now an agnostic. The whole world yearns for religion, he said, and Islam might not even be such a bad thing. If youre a man, anyway.
Thats the weirdest thing about Houellebecqs novel and whatCharlie Hebdowas getting at with its caricature. WithSoumission, hes out-contrarianed the contrarians. In his imagined battle of civilizations, he might side with Islam. As he told Sylvain Bourneau inThe Paris Review, the Koran turns out to be much better than I thought The most obvious conclusion is that the jihadists are bad Muslims. Obviously, as with all religious texts, there is room for interpretation, but an honest reading will conclude that a holy war of aggression is not generally sanctioned, prayer alone is valid. So you might say Ive changed my opinion. Thats why I dont feel that Im writing out of fear. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements.
Is he joking? Its entirely possible. So wasCharlie Hebdowhen it ran an issue edited by the prophet Muhammad, promising 100 lashes if you dont die of laughter. Neither the National Front nor jihadists are known for their sense of humor. Houllebecqs publisher, Flammarion, was evacuated today, and Houllebecq was placed under police protection.
See the article here:
What Michel Houellebecq Represented to the Charlie Hebdo Shooters