Both Really Smart and Oddly Dumb

I finally took advantage of USC guest speakers they have come to campus and talk about interesting topics such as Radical Evil in Liberal Democracies. All right, I guess I should say, interesting to me.

Marth Nussbaum was the speaker and she had a really cool basic point about practicing democracy and liberalism and freedom and how it cannot be thought of only as a government practice, that sustaining a democracy that respects difference must also be practiced and given emotional support by poets. Her examples were Walt Whitman and MLK. So, when my mom asks me, "how are you going to reconcile your deep interest in politics with making movies," I now have an smart-ass answer.

Anyhow, Nussbaum knows a lot about and lot and speaks eloquently about the "I Have a Dream Speech" to Whitman, to Rawls, to Locke, to Kant, and to Rousseau - whom she dismissed, but I rather liked.

Sadly and predictably, she talked about the awful ways in which American treats minorities and how ignorant the West in general is about Islam, yet she couldn't, during a 1 plus hour talk manage a single word about Radical Islam.

I find it amazing she is able to accuse the Hindu right in India of genocide against Muslims (which to me, implies we ought to go to war to stop it) but she can't even muster the words - Radical Islam - when she is talking about RADICAL EVIL today. She reserves it for Hindu nationalists and those in the US doing horrible things to Muslims (no one specific of course).

So she was asked a question to a) specify what she means by poets and b) how to reconcile that poetry is best when ironic and therefore anathema to the public sphere. Her poetry definition is broad, including poets, but artists of all sorts, architects, etc. She also acknowledged that poets operate best when on the edge, being out there, testing, and so forth. She talked a bit about humor and how important it is to the practice of tolerant democracy. She cited the greek comedies, which made me think she must be humorless (I would've talked about Chris Rock and Chappelle).

But anyhow, finally we got to an interesting question at the end when a guy posed the question over the Danish cartoons - how do you define tolerance? What if, as in the case of the cartoons, what one group finds intolerant and the other group finds their intolerance intolerant? How do you deal with that?

She basically said that from a legal perspective, you can regulate certain hate speech, but that the cartoons probably didn't fall within that category (esp in the US). But from a social perspective the cartoons ought to be viewed like bad behavior in school, if someone was making fun of someone else's religion, the teacher ought to scold them.

I wanted to jump out of my seat and yell, "What about Humor? You made such a point to mention humor's role in a functioning tolerant democractic state, and yet you want to curb the attempt at poking fun? Do you know nothing of the artistic process? The process of making humor? Humor, at it's root, is taking the piss out of someone. It is making fun of someone, perhaps yourself, but often others. Don't let anyone fool you. There is nothing NICE or respectful about humor. Humor has one criteria and one criterea only - is it funny. And what I love about that criteria is that it often coincides with that which is true. I mean to say, it's funny because it's true."

She went on to make a point about how ignorant the West is about Muslim society by saying that most Westerners don't even know the three most states with the most Muslims - Indonesia, India, and Pakistan. Despite the fact that I would have probably gotten the question right, what the fuck does that have to do with ANYTHING? Can you name the three states with the most Catholics? Who frigging knows? Is it Brazil? Russia? The US? I don't frigging know. Who cares? What does this demonstrate? She was trying to make a point about how the West does not separate Arab from Muslim...but who the fuck are we kidding? Islam was born in Saudi Arabia and the heart remains there. As Roman-Catholic as South America is, we all know the heart and soul of it is in the Vatican. Saudi Arabia funds a large percentage of large mosques around the world. Their influence is evident. So I don't know who she thinks she is fooling, by trying to use the veil of Western "ignorance" into avoiding dealing with a major (if not THE major) problem of the early 21st century, the issue of Radical Islam. And radical Islam is not born in Pakistan, Indonesia, or India. It is born out of Saudi Arabia and Egypt - and we see cells of it in Indonesia and Pakistan (no doubt influenced and funded by Wahhabist Saudis).

Let's be honest, some dude in Indonesia could give a flying fuck about Palestinians. Do you know how far Palestine is from Indonesia? Freaking far. They might as well care about the native Hawaiians. But no, they care about Palestine. Why? Because of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahhabists, who could never defeat Israeli in a real war, and have used and spread the Palestinian "issue" to evoke hatred towards Israel for the past 40 plus years. Hamas is simply a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Queda is a mix of a radical faction that split from the Muslim Brotherhood and a radical faction from the Saudi-funded Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

But no, not one mention of all of this. Off, way off.