[Trigger Warning: The following sentence contains a word
in German. Those of you for whom German means (and can only mean)
‘Nazi’, and thus might be
disempowering to your sensibilities, are advised to skip this material.]
It is characteristic of the Zeitgeist, that the self-coddlers and shrinking violets have (paradoxically) become extraordinarily
aggressive in asserting their veto-power over public speech: which now, given smartphones and
YouTube, in practice means all speech whatever. And that the sort of spineless wonders who typically
become administrators, cater to their strident whims.
 |
| "Don't ... use ... that ... word !" |
From this morning’s New York Times, and account by
Judith Shulevitz:
For our own essay on the subject (warning: contains verbs):
~
Just a moment ago, a curious sentence from the same
newspaper caught my eye. Indulge me in a bit of free-association.
As you probably heard, the social-media mavens in ISIL have
just put out a kill list of 100
service members, complete with name, photos, and addresses. All in a day’s work for the
Islamic State. But here’s the
oddity:
Several women are included on the
list, but their faces in the photos were blurred.
Not: “blurry”;
but deliberately blurred.
Want to know why?
If you pore through ISIS publications, you will notice that
women seldom appear in them: and
if they do, any hijabless face is blurred-out. (Oddly enough, politically-correct European publications
sometimes do the same thing; an
example here.) The reason
is, the Caliphate deems barefaced display an affront against female
modesty. (For an amusing account
of the contortions this leads to, read the account by Morten Storm of his
efforts to find a wife for Yemeni terror-chieftain Anwar al-`Awlaqi.) And, even though the whole point of the
hit-list is to get those people killed, and blurring the photo on a Wanted
poster is comically counter-productive, still, that is still a line they will
not cross: They’ll be happy to
kill you, ladies, but they won’t show your face.
(Incidentally, this is yet another example of ISIL behavior
that is inexplicable under the P.C. ground-rules that deny that the Islamic
State is Islamic.)
Like the erinyes of America (“vengeance demons” in
Buffyspeak), ISIL is offended by a great many things. Classical antiquities offend them: delenda sunt. Yazidis, Houthis -- well most
anyone apart from Wahhabis offend
them: delendi. When the professional victims on campus
are offended, they march in protest or take you to court. When ISIL is offended, they cut off
your head. Autres temps, autres moeurs;
but with some aptness, one might call the campus versions “American
Wahhabis”.
[update 30 May 2015] This from George Will:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/childishness-on-campus/2015/05/29/dba1fac0-0562-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html
[Update 18 June 2015] And this from a UCLA law professor:
[update 30 May 2015] This from George Will:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/childishness-on-campus/2015/05/29/dba1fac0-0562-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html
[Update 18 June 2015] And this from a UCLA law professor:
[Update 5 August 2015]
And now, a cool, level-headed contribution to the debate, by Kelefa
Sanneh, in this week’s New Yorker.
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