Saturday, January 10, 2015

Can Satire Defeat the Jihad?

Daniel Greenfield says it can. Anthony Furey begs to differ, and to make his case he quotes funnyman Woody Allen:
It reminds me of a scene from the 1979 Woody Allen film Manhattan, where he’s chatting with a woman at a party: 
Woody: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? We should go down there, get some guys together, y'know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them. 
Woman: There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op-Ed page of the Times, it is devastating. 
Woody: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point. 
In other words, satire has no impact on people tone deaf to nuance. As it stands, cartoonist rebuttals to the jihadis are only going to be seen by the pro-liberty echo chamber.
Meanwhile, the pro-sharia echo chamber echoes these  unintentionally amusing--and un-Spell Check'd--sentiments:



I think I'm with Anthony on this one (but that's just my opineon).

Update: Mark Steyn 'splains why the quip is not mightier than the sword:
I think it’s at war with a culture that basically does not have the spirit of liberty and the spirit of intellectual inquiry. So you can come up with the most devastating, witty, trenchant argument, and the other fellow is just going to reach for the scimitar and slice your head off.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Seen the 'position' of the CBC journalist on Charlie Hebdo?

https://twitter.com/johnbowman/with_replies