Actually
this is the word of the week, post the events in Paris and across the western
world. After my last post and seeing the
reaction of the western media to this attack on free speech and artistic
expression, I am very disappointed. The
one word that comes to mind is an Italian vulgarism, cacasott’. My Italian grammar is weak, so I’m not sure when
you drop the last vowel and use an apostrophe, but we have always pronounced it
without that last vowel. Literally it
means shit-in-your-pants, and it’s usually directed at a person or entity, so
it’s a noun meaning, one who is shit-in-his-pants cowardly.
That
is what the western media deserves to be called in respect to the Islamic
terrorists killings in Paris. Many were calling for all media to
dramatically publish the Charlie Hepdo
anti-Islamic cartoons, not as an insult to Islam, but as a defiant measure against
anti-free expression. I echoed this exhortation in my last blog post. Other than a few
media, the western media, who supposedly prizes free speech above all freedoms,
at least that’s what they tell us when they insult Christianity, were shitting
in their pants afraid. Cacasotts!
In
an opinion piece on National Review
Online, Rich Lowery had said it well in his “The Crises of Free Speech":
In the fight over free
expression, the editors and cartoonists of Charlie
Hebdo occupied the most forward and exposed position. They lit a flare over
their own parapet every night and said to the enemy that you may bring your
worst, but you can’t make us afraid.
That their craft
required such bravery in perhaps the most cosmopolitan city in the world is a
testament to the embattled state of free speech in the West.
The sad fact is that
physical intimidation works. Some press outlets pixilated or cropped out the
covers of Charlie Hebdo in their coverage of the Paris attacks, as if they were
the works of obscenity that the attackers consider them.
One
expects the Liberal outlets, which are not really Liberal in the truest sense
of the word, to be cacasotts, but the more common sense media outlets also
pulled back from fully publishing a cartoon.
Cacasotts! They have no qualms
about nudity, vulgarisms, or even offending Christians, but because Muslims
threaten violence and actually carry it out, they sit in their news rooms
shitting in their pants.
Jonah
Goldberg, also at National Review Online,
also had a great piece, “A Win for the Jihadists.”
Yes, despite being killed in their
supposed martyrdom, the terrorists won because they cowed the western media.
The vigils in Paris are
moving. The hashtag plumes of #JeSuisCharlie (“I am Charlie”) are endearing.
The expressions of condemnation from Muslim leaders are commendable, as are the
assurances of solidarity and support from Western governments.
But, as a practical
matter, they don’t change a thing: The jihadists won this week.
Even if the atrocity in
Paris served to imbue the civilized world — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — with
a newfound resolve to battle radical Islam (it almost certainly won’t), this
still stands as a victory for the bad guys.
And
further down Goldberg continues:
As a conservative, I
don’t like gratuitous mockery of religion, any religion. That’s not to say I
think all blasphemies are equally offensive. For instance, I think most satire
of Christianity is particularly cowardly and lame precisely because Christians
are such a safe target. Also, after centuries of tolerance for satire of
Christianity, opportunities for cleverness or originality are few and far
between.
Mockery of Islam,
meanwhile, whether in good taste or not, is dangerous and therefore also
courageous even when stupid.
In a world where Muslim
extremists weren’t killing people for such things, I’d be against publishing
such material (not as matter of law, but of editorial judgment). But we don’t
live in that world. And the slaughter in Paris only makes that more of a
reality.
And
finally I want to return to Lowery’s piece for a conclusion:
We all love the cliché
that the pen is mightier than the sword. But it hasn’t been true through most
of human history and isn’t true in many places — especially in the Muslim world
— even today. The pen is an instrument that needs constant protection and the
enlivening spirit of satirists of all sorts.
The cartoonists of
Charlie Hebdo understood that. Does the West?
That’s
a rhetorical question. We know the media
has proven to be cacasotts.
I
started my young adulthood as an anti-communist, cold war warrior, as we used
to be called. When the Soviet Union
collapsed, I thought that warrior part of my life had ended. Then there were the September 11th
attacks, and a new phase of my life started, an anti-Islamic-Fascist warrior,
if you will. It doesn’t appear the
Jihadist are going away any time soon. I’ll
probably end my life still a rhetorical warrior against them. But one thing I am not is a cacasott.
Sorry
for being so political.
