Nobody's Business

Let the Government Slap You in the Face Instead!

Thank heavens British authorities banned a traditional sport called "dwile flonking," involving people slapping wet cloths at other willing participants. It's a drinking game, and someone could've eventually gotten tipsy. Just look at those bottom-dwelling louts in the photo: they're actually having fun, fun I say. How dare they?! Did they even apply for a fun permit? Well then! About time these people got slapped with the six-month sentences and £20,000 fines that the law allows!

Topsy Turvy Britain

Zakir Naik, a Muslim TV preacher from India, has advocated

...the execution of Muslims who change their faith, described Americans as "pigs" and said that "every Muslim should be a terrorist."

Nonetheless,

Naik will be appearing at Wembley Arena in London and in Sheffield on his British tour.

That's right: his British tour. The Brits, when it comes right down to it, have no problem with letting him into their country. Contrast that with Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian who last year was put on a plane back to Holland — that is, banned from Britain — for making an incendiary if factually correct short movie about radical Islam, and for insisting that the Mussulman religion is incompatible with Western values.

I was briefly tempted to call it a double standard but it isn't. A double standard implies that you treat two similar behaviors unequally, favoring one. But is Mr. Wilders the equivalent of Mr. Naik? Hardly. Unlike Naik, who wants Sharia law and all that that implies, Wilders is a proponent of free speech. Unlike Wilders, who has never called for violent retribution against Muslims, Naik is on record as saying that the dirty kuffirs of the West must be fought, and that every Muslim should take up arms.

So which man should get booted from Britain?

A Brief Roundup of the Day's Most Predictable Stories

Cops get rowdy at boxing match, start fight. This is news?

TSA can't find its own ass with two hands. This is news?

Atlanta police officers taser whomever they feel like taserin,' autistic teenagers included. This is news?

Having Second Thoughts, Five Centuries Later

Who says the Catholic Church isn't on the ball? Only 500 years to rehabilitate Copernicus!

Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Won't You Please Help the Poor Government Workers?

In 2005, when I sold my home in Westchester County, NY, I had to pay a departure tax to my ex-town. Several percent, I kid you not — for the dastardly act of leaving said town which my wife and I, thanks to hard work and good times, had supported with all the other taxes levied on us during our six-year stint there.

Now the Times reveals that the money is needed in part to provide public servants with pensions that are richer than any salaries they've made in their lives. Some are taking voluntary retirement in their forties.

Nice work if you can get it.

Today Is Draw Mohammed Day

If people who threaten violence on cartoonists are treated not with fear but with outright mockery, and produce as a direct result of their actions not a cowed and silent respect for their fervor but an epidemic of giggling and a global WTF, maybe they'll be less incentivized to repeat the threat next time around. Meanwhile, the rest of us, with our now-broader parameters of acceptable discourse, will be able to get on with the tasks of modernity and prosperity.

His colleague Nick Gillespie:

No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats. ... Our Draw Mohammed contest is ... an existential thing, a participatory thing, a living thing. And it's not something that I expect those inclined to violence in the face of free expression to understand.

While I'm quoting away, let me throw in this insight from Isaiah Berlin:

Ridicule kills more surely than savage indignation.

Now, I am not necessarily on board with the content of all of the cartoons (though I don't mind most of them), and I have misgivings about a few passages in the second part of the otherwise recommended YouTube video, below, which makes generalizations about Muslims that should really be narrowed to violently radical Mohammedans and the medieval morons who support them.

But no matter: I will always join in the simple Voltairian act of defending the right to draw or write or paint or film anything that is not illegal. So, ransom notes and child porn, no. Images of Jews committing blood libel or Mohammed severing infidels' heads — regrettable as we may find them — abso-fucking-lutely.

Predictably, multiple thousands of Muslims are again in a righteous tizzy today. I ask again: How come your widespread outrage is only kindled when someone makes fun of your blessed prophet, and not when the assassins you've spawned go after Theo van Gogh, Cornelius Nekschot, Hitoshi Igarashi, Lars Vilks, Kurt Westergaard, Martin Rynja, Salman Rushdie, and others who refuse to genuflect before your chosen idol? Honestly, which is worse in the upside-down universe you call a religion — drawing a picture or butchering the artist?

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P.S. It is now past 5 p.m. EST and Reason has still not posted a single image submitted in its Draw Mohammed Day contest, an initiative it chose to host after the Seattle artist who proposed the idea got cold feet. I have no idea if that means that death threats and intimidation have caused delays, or if there's another explanation for the radio silence. I'll keep an eye on it all.

P.P.S. At 5:40, Reason posted the results of the contest. Note the unusual URL; the images are not hosted on the Reason server but on Amazon's storage site. Wonder why.

By the way, it seems to me that the editors have picked the three least offensive cartoons possible, though there's no way of knowing; we are not allowed even a cursory, low-res look at the other 190 Mohammed depictions that Reason received from readers. Feh.

The Ability to Swing

Consensual sex. Private space. Who cares? Actually, the Chinese government cares enough to send swingers to jail.

Ma Yaohai, 53, led a life that became intolerable to Chinese authorities: For the last six years, he was a member of informal swingers clubs that practiced group sex and partner swapping. In online chat rooms, his handle was Roaring Virile Fire. He organized and engaged in at least 18 orgies, most of them in the two-bedroom apartment in Nanjing.

On Thursday, a court sentenced Mr. Ma to three-and-a-half years in prison, a severe penalty for a crime that the Chinese government calls "crowd licentiousness." Mr. Ma, now China's most famous swinger, remains defiant and plans to appeal, saying his sex life is his own business, not subject to the law as long as he causes no social disturbance, according to his lawyer, Yao Yong'an.

Stuff like that would never happen in the United States, where we cherish our privacy and our liberty. No sirree bob.

[headline courtesy of Thomas Dolby]

Politicians Are More Equal Than You and Me

Stossel asks:

Do you employ unpaid student interns — college students who work in exchange for on-the-job training? If so, President Obama's Labor Department says that you're an exploiter. The government says an internship is OK only if it meets six criteria, among them that the employer must get "no immediate advantage" from the intern's activities. In fact, the employer's work "may be impeded."

The department has hired 250 investigators to stamp out this evil.

Here's what I want to know. How many volunteers and unpaid interns have worked on Obama's election campaigns? Will he insist on paying them retroactively? Going forward? If not, why not? Why does one set of rules apply to us and another set of rules to the political classes?

Mystery

Current Associated Press story about the attempted bombing of Times Square is headlined

NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery

The AP has a point. What could possibly have inspired Faisal Shahzad? It couldn't be the same faux-religious death cult that gave us Mohammed Atta, Richard Reid, Umar Abdulmutallab, Mohammed Bouyeri, and hundreds of other pious asswipes just like them, could it?

Nah. Let's just call it a mystery.

Kumbayah (Arabic for fuck you) to you too, AP.

"Whatever Lifts Your Luggage"

I'm joining in the coining.

In honor of Dr. George Rekers, the Family Research Council co-founder who made a career out of homo-hating, then hired a male escort to (ahem) "lift his luggage" during a recent vacation, I would like to give that expression greater use. You can help. Instead of saying "Whatever makes you happy" or "Whatever floats your boat," from now on let's say "Whatever lifts your luggage."

Do it for George! And pass it on!