Yes, Even White-Power Nightmare-People Can Participate in a Free-Speech Event

On Saturday, I appeared on CNN International with comedian/commentator Dean Obeidallah to debate the various meanings of last week's draw-Mohammed protest outside a Phoenix mosque. I couldn't really hear the questions very well, FWIW:

Reason on the free speech/Mohammed intersection here.

Comments

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Could I ask for a transcript? I really dislike watching video as a way of getting information. It's slower than reading, and it generates noise that my wife doesn't want to hear.

[Sevo]

That makes two.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Thank you. The whole of the internet seems bent on making me watch video. I have a DVD library. I can watch video if I want to. Or go to youtube. I bring up a magazine site to READ.

[Batgirl Esq.]

It also generates noise that I don't want my boss to hear.

[AlmightyJB]

That won't last

[Dweebston]

Way to other nightmare people. Freddy Krueger can't help the way he was born.

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

He wasn't born that way and you know that.

Your terrible and inaccurate joke offends me.

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

"Freedom of speech or inciting hate"

Clearly there's no way it could be both, since it's not like freedom of speech includes hateful speech in America or anything.

Solid false dilemma CNN.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Solid sloppy thinking CNN, of which false dilemma CNN is a large subset.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

CNN - journalism or retardation?

"Hey, it can be both, you know!"

[Fist of Etiquette]

I couldn't really hear the questions very well...

Well, they were being asked across international borders.

[Fist of Etiquette]

3:00 mark - "hate language

And then Welch fires back with the word "Jews" which I'm pretty sure is like calling the Japanese "Japs" (or at least I'm trying to make it so).

[Notorious G.K.C.]

"Our fellow-citizens of the Hebraic persuasion."

"People who skip synagogue on Saturday instead of skipping church on Sunday."

I guess we can't say "Israelites" any more, since that sounds like "Israelis."

[John]

A subset of Muslims have said that anyone who draws Muhammad or insults Islam should be killed and are willing to act upon it. How is a free society to respond to that? The only way I can see to respond is by everyone doing exactly that so that the Muslims realize they can't use the threat of murder to take away people's freedoms. Would I normally have any desire to go out of my way to draw Muhammad or insult Islam? No. By using the threat of terror in attempt to take away my freedom of expression, Muslims have given me and anyone else who values their freedom no other choice. I may not want to draw Muhamad, but I want the freedom to do so. And Muslims have left me no choice but to use that freedom or lose it.

[Viscount Irish, Slayer of Huns]

John, did you hear about the time CAIR tried to have an art installation at the Supreme Court with Mohammad in it sandblasted in the late 90s? The installation had Mohammad because it was about '8 historical law givers.'

http://www.dailyrepublican.com/sup_crt_frieze.html

This is why this situation is ridiculous. If we're not allowed to draw Mohammad now, then should we even be allowed to show older art depicting him? Why not say no one is ever allowed to show William Blake's or Salvador Dali's pictures of Mohammad being tortured from Dante's Inferno? And what about the Shia, who don't have the same prohibitions as the Sunni? Should we tell religious Shia Muslims that they can't draw pictures of their own prophet because it might make the Sunni feel bad?

[John]

Of course not. Christianity has a long tradition of iconoclasm. Plenty of protestant churches object to the crucifix or stained glass windows or elaborate ornamentation in churches. If a set of them decided to start murdering people who wore crucifixes, would the proper response to be to shun anyone who did as a racist and start tearing down St. John the Devine? Hardly.

Instead of calling the bikers who did this "white power people", Reason should be embarrassed that a bunch of bikers are apparently the only ones in this society willing to stand up and fight for freedom of expression. If reason doesn't like being soiled by being associated with bikers, they should not have cowardly ceded the field to them.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Yeah, I normally wouldn't like being on the same side as an Objectivist with a nuance problem (Pamela Geller), but she's doing yeoman's (yeowoman's?) work publicizing the issue, so I'm going with her rather than the CNN retards.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

*yeowymyn's

[Fist of Etiquette]

I think she completely dismissed Welch's argument that an anti-Semitic correlation is ridiculous.

[jester]

Drawing Mohammed is like drawing Jesus. No one knows what he looked like. It's so fucking absurd.

[jester]

Here's my picture of Matt Welch: 8 : ) cuz I said it was.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Welch is somewhat blas? about threats of violence against Geller or Ritzheimer as a "fact of life." I'M GETTING A MIXED MESSAGE ON VIOLENCE HERE.

[John]

It isn't a "fact of life". In fact to say that it is is to treat Muslims like animals. A fact of life is that a momma grizzley will eat me if I am hiking out west and am unlucky or dumb enough to get between her and cubs.

If groups of rednecks were running around beating up or murdering openly gay couples, would Welch call the threat of being killed because you are gay a "fact of life"? I seriously doubt it. I get the feeling from watching this that Welch is a bit embarrassed to have to defend this form of expression. He is doing it because he has to but he doesn't like doing it and frankly isn't too concerned by the terrorism and enforced censorship going on.

[Matt Welch]

Your impression is incorrect.

[John]

Fair enough. My apologies But it is not a "fact of life". We should never refer to it as such or accept it as such. It is a temporary reality created by a bunch of nuts who will at some point be forced to give up their ways.

[Matt Welch]

I meant it as "damning/sad/outrageous" fact of life, not like "there is no privacy, get over it."

[Fist of Etiquette]

For what it's worth, that's how I took it. But there's no passing up a joke when the opportunity presents.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Obeidallah tells us there's no Koranic prohibition on depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. I would have made him doodle one out right there, and I'd like to think Kennedy would have, too, if this discussion was happening on < i The Independents. After she broke his point stride with several ill-timed interruptions, of course.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Was Welch wearing a different outfit than his television appearance earlier in the day? What a diva.

[Matt Welch]

No.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Matt would never enact GILMORE's labor by making him do two wardrobe reviews in 1 day.

[tarran]

Out of curiosity, why were people protesting at *that* mosque?

[John]

Because that was the Mosque that the two clowns who tried to shoot up the meeting in Texas attended.

[SugarFree]

One of the shooters at the first event worshiped there.

[Ken Shultz]

"I couldn't really hear the questions very well"

FWIW, it took me a couple of minutes to understand anything Dean Obeidallah was saying, too. Listening to him talk is like watching Benny Hill. You're pretty sure it's in English, but you have to concentrate to understand what he's saying.

What, was it Everybody Talk Like Sean Connery Day or something?

[Ken Shultz]

P.S. The guy's name is Obeyed Allah, like really?

[John]

I read it as "Obey Da Allah". It is a very hip hop kind of name.

[Timon 19]

It's just a different form of the (mostly) prefix "Abd" meaning "slave" or "servant" of.

Abdullah, Obeidallah...same-same.

Seems that Obeid is more Levantine in origin. It also could be in part related to the Ubayyid/Ubaid period in Mesopotamia.

[Brian Dixon]

I think I see an error in the choice of subject tags for this post. Instead of "Second Amendment," shouldn't it be "First Amendment"?