By J. DeVoy
Stop one on our tour of the forthcoming dark age: Fundamentalist muslims attack Lars Vilks during a presentation on free speech at a Swedish university. Vilks was behind the 2007 cartoon depictions of Muhammad, and the film he intended to show continued this theme. What wasn’t shown in the video is the attempted arson of Vilks’s home on May 15, 2010.
Some would argue that Vilks should have been more sensitive, or chose his forum more intelligently. Surely he anticipated the reaction his art would provoke. In a society that values free speech, though, the mere fact that Vilks wanted to make and show such a film should be sufficient reason for him to do so — he shouldn’t have to balance the fact that some people might be (gasp) offended. Those offended by Vilks work have every right to be, but they’re not doing themselves any favors by resorting to violence and trying to censor his expression.
Next stop: Scantly clad seven-year-olds dancing suggestively to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. It’s legal, but jaw-dropping to say the least. This kind of stuff contributes to why organizations like ASACP exist and are so important. There is a market for such performances – when the dancers aren’t minors – but allowing encouraging and rewarding children born less than ten years ago to do this is in poor taste, to say the least. As seen in the case of child pornography, not all speech is protected by the First Amendment.
Finally there are the people themselves, whatever your political affiliation:
And, if these videos don’t shake your faith in the future enough, there are always the comments left by other viewers.
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Nice spread of videos. But really, ignorance, superstition and people being clueless is nothing new. At least no one in the developed world is calling for witches to be burned.
Good thing you hedged with “the developed world,” since witches are still being burned elsewhere. http://vodpod.com/watch/2959909-witch-burnings-in-africa
Yes, I was familiar with that horrific episode.
[...] Satyricon This is commentary on a series of 4 youtube videos; the latter two show a grossly misinformed public; the first shows what happens when one group [...]
It may be off topic, but isn’t it amazing to watch the Swedish video and see cops react sanely and effectively? There was a certain security risk, they reacted to it appropriately, but unlike our cops, they didn’t seem to think it was an excuse to go “oh boy, I finally get to use my baton!”
Homogenized society = virtually no underclass = no prole obsession with force and physical dominion on the flimsiest pretexts.
titcr
The only thing that creeps me out more than those girls dancing in lingerie is watching their parents try and justify it.
I personally have no problem with the dancers. It is, ultimately, of no consequence.
Any journalist can go to any rally and, with the right questions, the right editing, and a totally unprincipled desire to make people look stupid, can make people look stupid. I could easily do the same thing with a bunch of far-left global warming alarmists. It proves nothing except that many journalists are opportunistic, self-righteous, and as ignorant, in their own way, as the people they are mocking. I have more contempt for them than for the people they ridicule.
Seriously?
You think these reporters did a hatched job on these people? The Muslims took no prodding to act like idiots. I can not speak to the 7 year old dancers because I was unable to bring myself to watch the whole 2 minutes. As far as the American protesters, those tea-party people were asked simple follow up questions to the slogans on their signs. I must acknowledge we only saw a small sample size of the responses, but the few we did see speak for themselves.
I have more contempt today for the Supreme Court allowing sex offenders to be locked up indefinitely than I do for some kid pointing out the obvious stupidity of protesters.
I don’t think that the journalists put the tea baggers up to having Obama with Hitler mustache posters.