May 3rd, 2015 11:24 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Also in pleasanter news: from the New York Times:
Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel are among the writers who have agreed to be table hosts at next week’s PEN American Center gala after six authors withdrew in protest of an award being given to the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
So, that will do. That’s not too shabby. Alison Bechdel has a hit musical on Broadway at this moment.
The literary and human rights organization told The Associated Press this weekend that the other new hosts are George Packer, Azar Mafisi and Alain Mabanckou, a Congolese-born French author who will present the award to Hebdo’s editor in chief Gerard Biard and critic and essayist Jean-Baptiste Thore. PEN
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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB
May 3rd, 2015 10:46 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Zainub Priya Dala posted a note on Charlie Hebdo and free expression v intimidation to my Facebook wall, and gave me permission to quote it. I’m sure you remember her experience of violent intimidation.
Regarding the PEN American Center’s decision to present the PEN Free Expression Award to Charlie Hebdo:
In a similarity to my experience, (albeit my assault – on a much smaller scale)… It is not a question of content, but a question of style. Literary satirical style throught the ages has always been met with persecution. It is a style that is poorly understood, where artists attempt to create discourse and debate surrounding an otherwise taboo subject. I support freedom of expression in all its
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB, Zainub Priya Dala
May 2nd, 2015 6:32 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Glenn Greenwald thinks people have been misrepresenting the arguments of Francine Prose and Deborah Eisenberg.
To defend the award to Charlie Hebdo, PEN officials argued that the award did not constitute an endorsement of the content of the cartoonists’ speech, but rather, only a recognition that they were courageous in expressing themselves. The principle articulated by PEN was clear: a person is deserving of this award if they continue to express their views even in the face of credible threats of violence, and especially if they pay for their right to free expression with their lives.
The objecting PEN writers believe this principle to be invalid and contrived. To prove that point, they offered a hypothetical example that was classic
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB
May 2nd, 2015 4:38 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It appears that Harriet Harman held a meeting with gender segregation in the audience (or constituency or whatever you call people at a political campaign meeting).
Via LiarMPs:
Liar MPs @LiarMPs 3 hours ago
Imagine the outcry from the left wing if any other Party held a meeting with gender separation. @HarrietHarman pic.twitter.com/1qIXLzbMio
I suppose they could have sat that way by chance…or this could be a photo from some other event…
But LiarMPs again –
It’s a poster for a Labour Party jalsa or rally in Birmingham today, and at the bottom it says
Cllr Mariam Khan is organising a women’s section for Jalsa & is inviting all women to attend.
Well gross.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
May 2nd, 2015 4:22 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Meanwhile, in the annals of Bill Cosby, the list keeps lengthening.
In a press conference held by attorney Gloria Allred in New York this Friday, two women, Lili Bernard and Sammie Mays, both accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them.
Mays, a writer, says she met Cosby at a convention in New Orleans in the late ’80s, and that she became unconscious after receiving a drink from Cosby. She woke up half undressed and falling out of her chair.
Bernard, an actress who appeared on the final season of the “Cosby Show” and viewed Cosby as a mentor, claims that the comic drugged and raped her in the early ‘90s. “He praised me,” said Bernard. “He lifted
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Bill Cosby, FTB
May 2nd, 2015 3:52 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Christiane Amanpour in a public Facebook post. It’s a letter she sent to PEN.
I am sure I was among many people who were puzzled and dismayed by the 6 PEN writers who have pulled out of next week’s Gala because of the award going to Charlie Hebdo. I am very glad to know that American PEN is standing up for what’s right by going ahead with the award, and as such I am glad I am still able to make available my video-taped contribution to the Gala, on behalf of one of our jailed colleagues, Khadija Ismayilova of Azarbaijan.
Much has been already written disdaining the action and motives of the PEN 6. I can only imagine these
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB
May 2nd, 2015 11:49 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Thursday I posted a partial list of the writers who protest the courage award to Charlie Hebdo; via Glenn Greenwald here is the full list:
Chris Abani
Leslie Absher
Elizabeth Adams
Gabeba Baderoon
Deborah Baker
Russell Banks
Susan Bell
Naomi Benaron
Helen Benedict
Cara Benson
Charles Ramírez Berg
Susan Bernofsky
Eric Bogosian
Donald Breckenridge
Ami Sands Brodoff
Karen Brown Brooks
Janet Burroway
Helene Cardona
Peter Carey
Bryn Chancellor
Carmela Ciuraru
Patricia Clark
Tony Cohan
Teju Cole
Michael Cunningham
Emily M. Danforth
Tod Davies
Siddhartha Deb
Junot Díaz
Erin Edmison
Brent Hayes Edwards
Brian T. Edwards
Deborah Eisenberg
Hedi El Kholti
Trey Ellis
Eve Ensler
Elizabeth Enslin
Barbara Epler
Jennifer Cody Epstein
Ali Eteraz
Percival Everett
Marlon L. Fick
Boris Fishman… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB
May 2nd, 2015 11:00 am |
By Ophelia Benson
If you want to see people saying good, intelligent, reasonable things, you can do worse than check out Salman Rushdie’s Twitter. He’s RTd several such things.
Joel Gordon @JoelGord13 hours ago
Do Charle Hebdo opponents at PEN realize that boycotting their award normalizes murder as opposition to speech?
@JoelGord It lets murderers start and be part of the conversation. This is why none of their analogies to American racists, etc. works.
There’s Azar Nafisi:
Azar Nafisi @azarnafisi
.@PENamerican @SalmanRushdie PEN award to CH is recognition of the writers’ &artists’ rights to “disturb the peace,”regardless of the price
.@SalmanRushdie @PENamerican Satanic Verses didn’t insult true Muslims, it offended their oppressors who treated their own authors same way
Also … Read the rest
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB, Salman Rushdie
May 2nd, 2015 10:07 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Martin Robbins seizes the occasion of a birth in the Windsor family to point out what luck that baby has to be born with such good odds.
[T]hings are getting better. The small wrinkly proto-Royal that just emerged from the national womb will have thrice the chance of surviving that her father and I did, just through the privilege of being born in 2015. But if that makes you feel all warm and complacent, there are a couple of big problems with this story.
While it’s true that things are getting better, they’re still not good enough. Our babies are considerably more likely to die than those born in countries like Spain, Italy, France or basically any other European nation
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
May 1st, 2015 6:02 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Nossel explain why PEN is giving Charlie Hebdo an award.
Although censorship has traditionally been the province primarily of governments, attempts to curb speech are likewise undertaken by vigilantes who employ threats and violence. In the last few months we have seen shootings at Charlie Hebdo and at a free-speech event in Copenhagen; the hacking to death of two Bangladeshi atheist bloggers, one of them an American; a death threat against an Australian political cartoonist by jihadists; and the gunning down of a Pakistani social activist.
I missed the death threat against an Australian political cartoonist, but all the other items I’ve been ranting about relentlessly.
These audacious attacks aim to terrorize a worldwide audience
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB
May 1st, 2015 4:34 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
I found this by accident, looking for something else, but here it is for your Friday afternoon entertainment. Not that it is Friday afternoon for most of you any more, but it is for me.
Seattle for some reason I will never understand has a strong bias toward painting houses in horrible drab muddy dark dreary ugly colors. Dull greys, muddy greens, dreary browns…and that’s it. It’s annoying.
The Slog, the blog of the Stranger, ran a piece aptly titled Houses That Don’t Hate Color Like the Rest of Seattle. The first house is one I know well – it’s on the other side of the hill where I live.
Do admit.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
May 1st, 2015 11:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The symposium on Charlie Hebdo at Queen’s University Belfast is back on.
In a statement released today, Queen’s University said:
“Following the completion of a comprehensive risk assessment, undertaken in line with approved protocols, the University is pleased to confirm that the Charlie Hebdo Research Symposium, organised by the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities has been approved.”
The conference, titled Understanding Charlie: New perspectives on contemporary citizenship after Charlie Hebdo, will now be hosted by Queen’s Univeristy’s Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities on 4-5 June.
Jo Glanville, director of free speech advocacy group English PEN, welcomed Queen’s University’s decision, telling Little Atoms: “It’s very good news that the conference is now going ahead. We need
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
May 1st, 2015 11:00 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Guest post by Josh the Spokesgay.
[Note: This is a hypothesis and it’s surely incomplete and might be badly wrong in some places. I’m not suggesting it’s a well-documented piece of research; criticism and correction is welcome.]
I wonder if anyone else has noticed this: The current obsessions with gluten, GMO crops, “chemicals,” and “clean eating” are expressions of the exact same set of purity concerns that animated the mid-20th century consumer love of —wait for it—-foods made in sterile, scientific factories.
Take a look through cookbooks and promotional materials from food companies published in the 1930s through the 1950s. They go on at length about the “hygienic conditions” in which foods like vegetable shortening and bread were made. Many … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
May 1st, 2015 10:39 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Justin Erik Halldór Smith on Charlie Hebdo.
In response to the recent attempt by some members of PEN to betray persecuted editorialists throughout the world by refusing to honor the survivors of a right-wing death squad’s attack on a group of caricature artists in Paris a few months ago, Harper’s has taken my April essay out from behind its paywall. Many have been writing on the Internet about their exasperation with all the ‘think pieces’ on this topic. When will we have finally had enough? they wonder. My answer is that there will be no more need for ‘think pieces’ when there will be sufficiently serious thinking about this question. What the PEN protesters have given us is
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Charlie Hebdo, FTB