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The Spectacle Blog
In response to the firebombing of Charlie Hebdo Bruce Crumley, Paris bureau chief for Time, excretes this despicable garbage:
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren’t going to tell “us” what can and can’t be done in free societies? Because not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction?
The difficulty in answering that question is also what’s making it hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam… Predictably, the strike unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians, many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as “an attack on democracy by its enemies.”
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there’s no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring.
That a veteran journalist charged with managing a bureau of an international magazine thinks like this is appalling. There is no “difficulty in answering that question” of what good is served by Charlie Hebdo’s exercise of free speech: In a free society, you do not have the right to not be offended, and if we tacitly agree to carve out an exception for speech that offends groups that are willing to respond violently, we are rewarding and encouraging violence. As Michael Brendan Dougherty puts it:
Of course Crumley’s comments are disgusting, they are also a blunder and an incitement.
By siding against the free criticism of religion, Crumley encourages radical Muslims to continually lower the bar for what constitutes an outrageous offense against their faith. Can’t draw cartoons about Muhammad today? Well, tomorrow you can’t do critical scholarship of the Koran either.
That anyone standing in the same nation that birthed Voltaire and Baudelaire could say this just makes us sad.
It should make us not just sad, but outraged. As long as this reprehensible coward is running Time’s Paris bureau, it’s impossible to imagine that they won’t exhibit a bias in favor of groups willing to use violence, and against groups petitioning society by peaceful and democratic means. If Crumley isn’t fired immediately, Time (at least in its coverage of Europe) has no credibility as a journalistic enterpise.
View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/02/times-paris-bureau-chief-think
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Occam's Tool| 11.2.11 @ 4:22PM
They "openly" beg for the violent reactions, huh? Crumley is well named. Just another terrorist fellating Dhimmi.
DRed| 11.2.11 @ 5:01PM
They should fire this idiot.
MarkJ| 11.2.11 @ 5:46PM
Bruce Crumley's greatest regret is that he'll never be appointed Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in a Hitler Administration.
Trinacria| 11.2.11 @ 6:31PM
"It should make us not just sad, but outraged."
Conceptually, yes; practically, not so much. Why? Because being sad and outraged implies (a) an expectation of something more and (b) an assignment of relevance to the party in question.
Let's face it, a comment with any relevance on a global scale hasn't been uttered from within the borders of France or printed in the pages of Time for well over a century for the former and nearly half a century for the latter. Awfully hard to get too worked up about a small pimple on one's ass (sure, it might be a literal pain in the ass, but nobody really notices it)....
Next...
omar| 11.2.11 @ 6:40PM
The reaction to this drivel on the TIME blog is almost uniformly negative. I think Crumley is an outlier even on the left/liberal side of the spectrum...or at least, I hope so. As a left/liberal person, I would be very concerned if this kind of moronic drivel is now standard.
David W| 11.2.11 @ 6:59PM
I dropped Time a long time ago.
hook| 11.2.11 @ 7:45PM
Free speech apparently takes a hiatus when it comes to criticizing Muslim conduct. That policy,concept, inclination or whatever we want to call it is going to be deadly.
I do, however, agree with that Fox commentator who is a former intelligence officer. Some colonel who says that eventually Western Europe will begin brutalizing Muslims and WE will be rescuing them. I think this could happen in France and maybe the UK, but never Scandanavia which is going to be under Sharia law in a few years.
CalMark| 11.2.11 @ 7:57PM
If the Muslims get brutalized in Europe, we should stay out of it. And we shouldn't feel bad about inaction, either.
Anyway, how else to civilize these maniacal, theocratic savages? Being nice to them obviously doesn't work.
Skippy| 11.2.11 @ 7:58PM
We already did that in Kosovo/Serbia/Yogoslavia/Croatia/Albania/Whogivesashitia under Boy Clinton.
As Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
RJ| 11.2.11 @ 9:47PM
A remarkably stupid comment for a publisher to say. You would think they would object to violence against any press institution. Why does he think Time is immune to such violence?
J.C.Eaton| 11.3.11 @ 2:05AM
Precisely. Well played.
albert constantine jr.| 11.2.11 @ 10:36PM
"If Crumley isn't fired immediately,Time (at least in its coverage of Europe) has no credibility as a journalistic enterpise."
I wasn't aware that Time had credibility as a journalistic enterprise, in Europe or anywhere else.
Dollface| 11.3.11 @ 6:42AM
Time ceased having jouralistic credibility long ago.
JAllyn| 11.3.11 @ 7:48AM
Friends,
Seriously, Time magazine is still in business...I’m shocked, shocked!
Like the NYT and Newsweek, they are the last bastions of scoundrels.
To even begin thinking like the European Editor of Time, reminds me of the misguided European leaders in the 1930s who did not fight back. “If we give the Nazi’s a little, they will go away,” is the whole reason 30 million people died between Iceland and Honolulu.
Now we are back to this kind of thinking, from what was a respected source of global news. Perhaps when the trains are rolling east again, filled with women and children, or “goon squads” are rounding up dissidents, i.e, the Communists in the Ukraine, Hungary, Cuba, and Rhodesia, will less-than-useful editors of unread magazines come to realize why Western Civilization and it liberal ideas of thinking have ruled the world since the days of the Greek and Roman Empires.
Cheers from Brussels.
Raley| 11.3.11 @ 8:09AM
John, that was a terrible cop out. You in no way tried to mount any argument of how they didn't have it coming.
Would you feel ashamed of your intellectual dishonesty to even try to make this argument? How the 4th magazine in a row to attempt to solicit this exact same response by doing the exact same thing was just as successful as all the previous ones... and that's somehow a surprise or anything other than their intent at this point?
This is exactly what they had coming. This is indisputable. We've run the experiment more than once an have concurring results. You can argue that you they didn't deserve this, but there is no possibility you can mount any argument as to the outcome being a surprise or that the publishers didn't expect this.
Unless you couple it with a phenomenal story about how you located the most inept, clueless, Darwin-award-worthy, cave-dwelling morons on the planet who would have died from showering with electrical appliances had they not worked for this publication. Is that the case or did they not only have this coming but were completely aware of it also? Because it will be a strange story where this was all a big surprise to them. There's gonna be some journalism awards in that story for you if you can pull it off.
Or we can read another blog post that this weeks episode of Fear Factory had people eating disgusting stuff. You mean like all the previous ones? OMG no way, who saw that coming!
albert constantine jr.| 11.3.11 @ 9:50AM
For centuries, those who challenged the dogmas of the Catholic Church in Europe were not only scorned as heretics, they were burned alive. It doesn’t happen much anymore, though ,owing largely to centuries of warfare in which thousands died, along with the advance of competing religious and secular models of organizing European society. Your post seems to suggest that we should accept the legitimacy of Islamic mob theocracy, because their response to those who give them offense is predictably violent. It appears that you have already accepted your dhimmitude.
jane| 11.3.11 @ 3:52PM
From Malcolm X to Louis Farrakhan black Muslims have degraded Jews like the KKK once did them. Where I live the library and bookstores carrying the anti-Jewish, anti-white, anti-gay Nation of Islam newspaper. Apparently all those who have been victimized by the Islamic and black media- Jews, Asians, gays, women- are going about it wrong. Let's see people begin to use violence to shut down the black and Muslims hate speech.