Taboos and Double Standards

In our on-going culture wars, the gripe du-jour among white Trump supporters this week is that there is a double standard in the media regarding the treatment of performers who cross one line or other in regards to race and politics. It began, as so many issues these days, with a tweet.

Celebrity Roseanne Barr, who made a comeback with her eponymous sit-com about a working class family with conflicting political opinions, sort of a 2010's version of All in the Family, got into hot water this week when she tweeted that former Obama advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who hapens to be African American. looked like a cross between the "Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes." Now why she chose to pick on Ms. Jarrett who has been out of the spotlight for a while I have no idea, but that's just what she did. After being roundly criticized from a wide swath of the American public, Barr apolgized to Jarrett for the tweet, but the damage was done. Later in the day ABC, the network who broadcasts her highly rated show, cancelled it.

While Barr's tweet was criticized by virtually everyone, her firing was slammed by many for being an overreaction to what was simply meant to be a joke, albeit a tasteless one with racial overtoves. Barr took back the remark and immediately apologized for it, that should have been enough, critics of ABC said. The argument went on that other celebrities make crude and vugar references about public figures all the time and get away with it scott free. Bill Maher for example compared President Trump to an orangutan, and Samantha Bee just this week referred to Ivanka Trump as a "feckless cunt." Bee also apologized for that remark. But unlike Barr, Maher and Bee got to keep their jobs despite doing essentially what Barr did.

Cries of unfiar, and accusations of double standards went up all over the ultra-right airwaves which claimed that Barr was fired and the others were spared for one and only one reason, because Barr is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. Not surprizingly, the president also got into the act with his own tweet. He openly whined about Disney, the parent company of ABC. If they saw fit to fire Barr for her comments about Jarrett, and then apologize to the American people for those remarks, why didn't they apologize to him for all the mean things celebrities under their employ said about him?

Putting aside the petty and pathetic nature of the President of the United States making the firing of a celebrity over an offensive comment, all about himself, does Donald Trump have a point? After all, Bill Maher compared him to an ape, just like Barr compared Jarrett, and Bee crossed a line when she used the "C" word to describe his daughter. Fair is fair isn't it?

If there were a creature from outer space who arrived to earth just in time for this story to break, he, she, they, it or whatever the correct pronoun for a creature from outer space is, would certainly see a double standard here, Barr was fired and Maher and Bee were not, for doing essentially the same thing. But in our society, you'd have to be a creature from outer space to not understand the difference, and no, it does not have anythigng to do with the poitics of the people involved.

The issue is race, pure and simple. A couple months ago. I dealt with the issue of reverse racism, trying to find eqinamity beween the way white and black people in the United States relate to each other. My conclusion was that it is simply not possible. In other words, reverse racism does not exist. You can read that post here.

Now you might read that and say wow, this guy is just swayed by the scourge of political correctness. Well several years ago I dealt with that subject as well. You can read that here.

The jist of the matter is this, every society has its own taboos. In Turkey for example, it is considered taboo to show the bottom of your feet in public,, with or without shoes. In Cambodia, it is wrong to take a photograph with three people. Every society, including our own, has its own cultural taboos that are bewildering to people of other cultures.

There were far more taboos when I was growing up in this country than there are now. For example, one would never ask a woman her age. Then of course there were George Carlin's famous "Seven words you can't say on TV." Well you still can't say those words on broadcast TV but they are used so frequently these days in common speech that they go all but unnoticed. As a result, they have all but lost their power to evoke or provoke as the case may be.

But never fear, there are two words that have supplanted them, words  so vile and taboo in our society, that even the slightest mention of them in polite company, with rare exception, marks the utterer of them, the basest of individuals. That's because the two words refer not to bodily functions but are the most derogatory descriptions of specific groups of people, one of them, African Americans, the other, women. And the two greatest taboos in our society today are number one, being a racist, and number two, being a sexist. For all its shortcomings, political correctness is a means to enforce these taboos that deserve to remain as such.

If you believe that reverse racism and for that matter, reverse sexism exists, consider this:, no matter how hard you try to find one, there is no white equivalent for the "N" word, and no male equivalent for the "C" word. Granted there are derogatory words, insulting words, obnoxious words to describe white males, but nothing that comes close to the vile intent conveyed by those two specific words. And for good reason, black people and women have experienced centurites of repression, suppression, and oppresion in our society, white men have not. All the while, white men have called the shots, and for that matter, by and large, still do.

There has been a double standard reagrding race and regarding gender in this country since the beginning. So now the pendulum has swung the other direction and yes indeed, today there is a double standard in regard to the words you can legitimately use to describe another race or gender. As a result there are lines that exist in regards to the words we can use to describe oppressed groups of people, including women, that don't exist in the other direction.

And with that the ultra right cries foul. "Not being able to use words? Why that violates our free speech as guaranteed in the First Amendment!"

Well not so fast. The First Amendment of the American Constitution guarantees that Congress shall not create a law "abridging freedom of speech" (among other things). So yes there is no law against spewing the most vile, racist, sexist or hateful words, as the constitution protects against it. In other words, the police cannot come and arrest you for speaking your mind. What the constitution does not protect you from, are the consequences that may arise from that speech, including losing your job. You are free to say whatever you like without fear of arrest, but your employer doesn't have to ruin its reputation by having to associate with you. And a private company such as Facebook or Twitter is not required to publish your vile words. They are perfectly free to delete what you say, if it does not fall within their well established guidelines, or outright ban you at their discression. So say whatever you like, but remember, you are on your own, at least according to the constitution.

Roseanne Barr a white woman, crossed a definite line when she likened Valerie Jarrett, a black woman, to an ape. She was not arrested, therefore her constitutional rights were not violated. ABC, a company with a reputation to withhold, decided it no longer wanted to be affiliated with her. That decision, right or wrong, is their right, and they acted upon it.

On the other hand, there is no line against making fun of the president or his family, in fact, there is a long, distinguished history of it in this country. Personally I find Bill Maher obnoxious and at times despicable. But he, a white man, did not cross any line by calling Trump, another white man, an orangutan. In fact if anything, I think his remark was more offensive to orangutans than to Trump but maybe that's just me. Samantha Bee calling the first daughter the "C" word, if not crossing a line, came pretty close. I suppose she gets cut some slack because she is a woman calling another woman that word. Frankly it wouldn't bother me if either Maher or Bee lost their job for of their vulgar comments, because that decision is the discretion of their their employer. I may not like it, but it's not my network.

The fact is, if we are dismayed when a TV network chooses to hire or fire somebody, or not hire or not fire somebody, there is something we can do about it. Change the channel. If enough of us do that, believe me, the network will get the message.

On the other hand if a black man cannot walk down the street without being suspected of being a criminal simply because of the color of his skin, he cannot change the color of his skin.

Or if a woman cannot go to work with the full expectation tha she will be treated fairly, justly and with respect at all times, simply because she is a woman, she cannot change her gender.

Nobody ever said life was fair.

Given that, if you're whining this week because you think it's unfair that a network cancelled your favorite TV show because of a racist remark made by its star, I have two words for you.

Tough shit.

Charlie again...

Like just about everyone, for the past week I've been thinking a great deal about the fate of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, the Paris magazine that published cartoons that many in the Muslim community found brutally offensive and blasphemous. The more I think about it, the closer I come to the conclusion that the publication of those cartoons, which cost nine members of the magazine and three police officers their lives, was utterly pointless.

Now let me make it clear that I'm a staunch defender of freedom of speech, religion, assembly and of the press. For that reason, back in the seventies I supported an Illinois State Supreme Court decision that allowed neo-Nazis to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie. Mind you, I was also prepared to shed not a single tear in the event that any harm might befall the marchers in the predominantly Jewish village. It turned out the march never took place, as the Nazis in the end turned out to be either too cowardly, or too sensible to go through with it.

I understand that comparing Charlie to a bunch of Nazis is a bit of a stretch but please bear with me.

There is little question that many of Charlie's cartoons were offensive, even racist. The editors got around that issue by publishing cartoons that were offensive to many different groups, especially the religious. Few it seemed, were spared the wrath of Charlie. 

As everybody knows by now, Charlie was made up of writers and cartoonists who had been performing their craft since the heady days of the sixties. They considered themselves up until the time of their deaths, to be radical leftists, and their work reflected the disdain of social mores that was the rallying cry of their youth. The inheritors of a long history of crude satire in France, Charlie's target back in the day was the establishment. Just as their ancestors in the craft made profane and scatalogical images of royalty and the leaders of the Church, the pens of Charlie focused on those in power: politicians, captains of industry, and of course as always, the Church. The forebear of Charlie, a magazine called, Hara-kiri, was officially banned after it made fun of the death of French icon, former President Charles de Galle. The mocking of sacred cows has been the raison d'être of Charlie ever since it sprung up from the ashes of Hara-kiri in 1970.

In the sixties, young people, raised in the relative prosperity of the times, became disillusioned with society. Fed up with the status quo, they called out the wrongs they saw in society: racism, sexism, the war in Vietnam, uptight and hypocritical views on sex and drugs, the list goes on and on. The anti-establishment work of individuals such as cartoonist Robert Crumb, writer William S. Burroughs, LSD guru Timothy Leary, and  radical organizations like the Black Panthers, and the S.D.S. served as beacons for at least some of the Baby Boomer generation, who saw themselves as particularly enlightened compared to the people of the generation that proceeded them, namely their parents. This is precisely the mileu in which Charlie Hebdo flourished. Like the British comedy sextet Monty Python, Charlie Hebdo ridiculed the institutions their parents held dear such as government, patriotism, the class system, and religion.

This gets to the very nature of satire and its power as a tool for social change.

Thanks in part to Charlie and its like-minded brethren in establishment bashing, the world did begin to change. They were helped along by the corruption, arrogance and incompetence of the highest magnitude on the part of those in power, and the relentless pursuit of them by the press. The net result of the turbulent sixties and seventies was the creation of a new, and exceedingly cynical generation, mine, one that questions everything and holds little sacred. My generation, raised on Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, and Charlie Hebdo, is the one that currently holds most of the power in the western world today.

Sorry about that.

Our overriding cynicism transcends ideology; no politician on the left or right, could succeed in this day and age by taking him/herself, or anything for that matter too seriously. Today in the U.S., if you aspire to higher office, you have to make the rounds and play stupid pet tricks on Letterman, SNL or Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. In other words, in the West, every politician has to understand, if not necessarily like the language of Charlie.

The one thing my generation does hold sacred, is our liberty. We may disagree over the rights of individuals versus the collective rights of all, but we do all like freedom of speech, especially when it comes to our own speech.

As with any ideal with devoted followers, there are those who take their belief system to extremes, wrapping themselves around dogmatic minutiae to the point of losing sight of the core, fundamental basis of those values. This holds true with the devotees of liberty as much as it does with followers of any religion.

The men who committed the murders in Paris last week took their religion to the most extreme point possible. As a result, their acts not only profane humanity, but also subvert and profane Islam and all religion. These are not my words but the words of countless Muslims, including the leader of the radical organization, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It is my sincere belief that the publishers of Charlie Hebdo also took the one thing they held sacred, their own freedom of speech, to such extremes that they lost sight of the deeper meaning of that liberty. Granted, they didn't kill anyone directly, but we all saw the result of their acts of publishing the offensive cartoons. The editors, cartoonists and publishers certainly knew the risk they were taking, and innocent lives were lost along with their own. After the tragic events a week ago Wednesday, cartoonists in solidarity with Charlie including Robert Crumb, felt compelled to publish their own profane images of the Prophet Muhammad. This week, the survivors of Charlie, published yet another cartoon of Muhammad, this time wearing a "Je suis Charlie" button.

And like clockwork, the reaction of much of the Muslim world who did not grow up with the same cynical values we did, has been predictable.

Like the issue of the Nazis in Skokie, I support the right to publish those cartoons, but not for a second do I endorse them.

I can't help be reminded of an incident that happened in our family a long time ago. I don't know how it started but one Thanksgiving, my grandmother and my uncle got into a terrible fight, the screams of which reverberated through our entire house via the heating ducts. The subject of the argument was this: which one of them suffered more during the war. My uncle, a bombardier shot down over Romania in 1944, was captured and held prisoner of war for about six months. My grandmother, recently widowed, had to live with the fact that she might have lost her only son as well as her husband. Obviously both of them suffered a great deal during the experience, and on the surface, the argument was stupid and pointless.

But like all conflicts between human beings, this flight wasn't really about the subject at hand, but about the entire relationship between the individuals and all the baggage that came with it. The sad part was that neither my uncle nor my grandmother were able to empathize with the other, neither could see or even be willing to imagine the other person's perspective.

Likewise, the folks who are offended by the Charlie cartoons don't know (or care about) the history of French satire, the context in which the cartoonists grew up, or the fact that the cartoonists don't particularly link themselves with the anti-Islamic Western establishment. What they do see are cartoons that ridicule and demean the thing that is most sacred to them, drawn by old white men, the very embodiment of the anti-Islamic establishment.

For their part, the Charlies, with their privileged backgrounds and disdain of anything that reeks of religiosity, cannot (or care to) grasp the lives of the powerless. Their one-size-fits-all world view does not conveniently fit in with the views of  the poor, the marginalized and the disenfranchised, for whom faith is a transcendental source of hope and inspiration.

What the Charlies of the world have so far failed to grasp is the fact that satire is effective as the tool of the powerless against the establishment, but does not work very well the other way around.

As their one and only accomplishment to date in this conflict, Charlie Hebdo at least for the time being, has made bed-fellows of the pro free-speech-at-whatever-cost left, and the xenophobic right in Europe, in the spewing of anti-Islamic rhetoric. I pointed out in my last post, that this plays right into the hands of extremist Islamic organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS, in their attempts to recruit people into their ideals of global jihad. Nothing that has transpired since has tempered my feelings.

I don't see any of this turning out at all well, at least in the near future. Perhaps time will heal the wounds and thirty or forty years hence, we'll all, (Muslim, Christian, Jew and Atheist), be able to sit down at the table together, and like my family who continues to this day to talk about the rift between my grandmother and my uncle, laugh about the conflict which for all intents and purposes, amounted to little more than a silly pissing contest.

One can only hope.

Again, the pen is mightier than the sword

What's this world coming to?

Those were the sentiments of many of us on this side of the pond as we woke up Wednesday morning to the news of the massacre in Paris where gunmen killed twelve people in and around the offices of the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo.

The tragedy spawned countless real and virtual demonstrations around the world with people expressing their solidarity with the victims, and their disdain of the assault on the freedom of the press, by posting, chanting and carrying signs proclaiming, "Je suis Charlie."

Charlie Hebdo was no stranger to violence. Its Paris offices were bombed in 2011, after they published a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad, as "guest editor" of a special edition of the paper temporarily re-christened: "Shariya Hebdo."

In the name of freedom of expression, the publishers of Charlie Hebdo were not swayed in the least; they retained their edge since the bombing. Despite the attack and numerous threats, the paper continued to publish articles and cartoons slamming Islamic extremism, among other things.

I for one admire the temerity and the sheer chutzpah of the folks at Charlie Hebdo. They understood full well the risks of publishing work that was critical of radical Islam, work they felt was important to publish. They stood by that work, and paid the price with their lives.

But like most of the burning issues of the day, or any day for that matter, it's much more complicated than that.

One thing puzzles me about the public's reaction to the terrible event, namely, how can anyone in this day and age be the least bit surprised by this act of terrorism?

The staunch defenders of Charlie Hebdo's publishing of their provocative cartoons, including the depiction of the prophet Muhammad,  (which alone is considered a grievous offense to many of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims), is the simple manifestation of the paper exercising its freedom of expression. "I live under French law, not Koranic law",  Stephane Charbonnier, an editor and cartoonist who was killed on Wednesday said back in 2011. M. Charbonnier and his colleagues published work that many people feel was not only biting satire, but also at its root, deeply offensive to a great number of people. From an article in the New York Times published after the attack:

After the 2011 bombing, some were critical of the magazine. In a letter to The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times), Celina Maria Pedro de Vasconcelos wrote, “It’s disturbing to see how the principle of freedom of the press in the West continues to be confused with free-for-all permission to target various cultures with slander, innuendo and disrespect. The consequences of mocking the Prophet Muhammad should not surprise us.”

Some might label this sentiment as political correctness run amok. After all, are we to restrict ourselves to publishing only ideas that are offensive to no one? If that were the case, nothing would ever get published.

On the other hand, one needn't live under Koranic law to understand the implications of lambasting the deeply held beliefs of one quarter of the world's population.

Many point out that Charlie is an equal opportunity lambaster, its favorite target is religion of all stripes. There is a long tradition of highly irreverent humor of this type in France dating back to time immemorial. Some suggest that all the fuss over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is simply a clash of cultures. Why not lighten up and laugh it off some people say.

Well I may not know much but if I've learned anything in my 56 years on this planet, it's that people who are deeply religious, no matter what the creed, seldom have much of a sense of humor about their own faith.

But it goes much deeper than that...

I hardly need to list the atrocities committed by extremists in the name of Islam over the past twenty years whose victims were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The big difference here is that the victims of the Paris massacre Wednesday were directly involved in the act that angered their killers; all the victims that is except for the wounded policeman whose execution at the hands of the perps as he pleaded for his life, exists on video for all the world to see. That officer by the way happened to be Muslim.

Whether we like it or not, Islamic extremists, whether they belong to al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, or any number of similar groups, have declared war on the West, on our lifestyles and especially on our values.

We must be willing to except the fact that not everyone in this world accepts our core values of Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité. As we've seen in our failed attempts at nation building in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, there are many who don't share our belief in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Contrary to something President Obama said this week, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to practice, or not to practice the religion of one's choice, are not universally held values. And without a doubt, not everyone in the world believes in equal rights for all, including women, or that people should be afforded the opportunity to live their own lives as they see fit, including homosexuals. There are many in the world, who are not necessarily Islamic extremists, who view these cornerstone values of our Western democracy as morally bankrupt, corrupt, and decadent.

In a perfect world, people with different sets of values would learn to live in peaceful coexistence with each other. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world.

Here in the United States, the fragile status quo after the attacks of September 11, 2001 have left many of us complacent about the threat of terror. Our military has taken out key terrorist targets, most notably Osama bin Laden. Despite that, few of us are foolish enough to believe that with bin Laden gone, the threat is over. Fortunately there is strength in numbers and the number of extremists willing to commit unspeakable acts of terror is still relatively small.

That might not always be the case.

"If you give in to the terrorists through self-censorship, then the terrorists win", argue the "I am Charlie" crowd. On the contrary, I believe that the editors of Charlie Hebdo played right into the hands of the extremists by publishing their cartoons portraying Muhammad as a bumbling idiot in stereotypical Arab garb. Nothing could fit better into the master plans of the extremists than to make it appear that we in the West are waging a war on Islam, not the least of which, through our laws that permit the publication of words and images that ridicule what is most sacred to them.

For all their brilliance and guile, the propagandists of ISIS and al Qaeda (who as of Friday has taken credit for orchestrating the Paris attack),  could not have come up with better recruitment posters to radicalize new members into their ranks than the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo. "Look at these..." I can hear them shout, "this is what the western infidels think of us, our Prophet, and Allah, may He be exalted." Like it or not, the Charlie cartoons were a provocation, certainly not to all Muslims, but to a volatile, lunatic fringe whom al Qaeda is more than happy to exploit in order to carry out their plans of global jihad.

We can rant all we want about the absurdity of people going on a murderous rampage because of a cartoon, but as we saw this week, this is the reality of our world today. To make matters worse, the Paris murders will no doubt embolden scores of right-wing French in their quest to rid their country of foreign (read Islamic) influence. Muslim businesses in Paris have already been vandalized and we can expect more to come. The survivors at Charlie Hebdo have promised to publish their next issue on time, being as irreverent as always, pissing off and provoking more violence to be sure.

And as this war on Islam, real or perceived, gains steam, more and more bored, anchorless, and disenfranchised, young Muslim men and women looking for meaning in their lives, will become radicalized and join in the fight, precisely the scenario al Qaeda is looking for. From his suite from deep within the recesses of hell, Osama bin Laden surely is pleased today.

We in the West take our liberties for granted. To most of us it is inconceivable that our most basic rights will ever be taken away from us. Perhaps that's why the reaction following the slaughter of the staff of Charlie Hebdo has been so great. For their defiance in the face of threats, the victims are viewed by some as heroes. But to me the real hero Wednesday was Ahmed Merabet, the police officer who was shot in the head by the terrorists as he lay helpless, immobilized on the street after being already shot in the groin. By far the most poignant comment I've read since Wednesday came from a man named Dayd Aboud Jahjah who tweeted:

I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.

No, I am not Ahmed, simply because I am not a hero. As for the heroism of the Charlie staff, well personally I'm not so sure. The question for which I have no answer is this: were their intentions in publishing their cheeky and provocative cartoons truly intended to make the world a better place, or were they merely self-serving means to get attention for themselves and their paper? If it's the former, then yes of course they were heroes, if misguided ones. If it's the latter, then all bets are off and their actions have to be characterized as nothing more than foolish and irresponsible.

Along with liberty comes responsibility. Contrary to popular opinion, our freedoms are not absolute. This week we learned just how powerful ideas and the expressions of them can be. In the words of Václav Havel:

I inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

And as somebody else said: "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Why then is it so unreasonable, especially in this world of tenuous relationships between cultures, to expect ourselves to choose our words and express our ideas with care and good judgement?

Despite my fervent belief in freedom of speech, and of the press, in light of the terrible events in France this week, I must regrettably conclude with this sentiment:

Je ne suis pas Charlie.