Sigh.
Ash Sarkar. Of course.
Don't have anything particularly clearheaded to say, but the stabbing of Salman Rushdie (though it has decades-old origins) alongside the campaign of threats and intimidation against drag queens in the US makes it feel like a very grim, dangerous time for artistic expression.
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) August 12, 2022
Comments
9 responses to “Where to begin”
I have something clear-headed to say to Sarkar. I remember when The Satanic Verses was published and I also remember Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ also came out in movie theaters back at the same time. Both works were controversial, both were seen as blasphemous. But only one was on the receiving end of a fatwa. So comparing what happened to Rushdie today with the negative reaction that drag-queen story time has recently received in the U.S. is just, how do the Brits put it? Bollocks, I believe. I’m open to being corrected if that’s not quite right though.
Bollocks is exactly right.
I have something to say to Sarkar, too.
Well done, you narcissistic plonker. You’ve just single-handedly peaked millions of fans of Salman Rushdie in particular, and literature in general.
But apparently a great time in history to piggyback your ideology onto anything newsworthy! What a great time to be alive. :P
Don’t have anything particularly clearheaded to say, but we should really be talking about me.
There is absolutely NOTHING about which these people will not change the subject to make it about themselves.
They don’t even recognize that, in this situation, the correct analogy is that THEY are the attackers with knives, stabbing women and LGB in the neck.
“Excuse me everyone, excuse me, I SAID EXCUSE ME
…
This recent attack is actually all about me and mine.”
There are ways to relate this tragedy to things important in one’s own life without being a narcissistic wanker.
For instance, when I say that Salman Rushdie’s words and actions partly inspired my own work on free speech and privacy and changed the whole course of my life, I’m saying that Rushdie has personal significance to me and that I evaluate the tragedy partly through that lens, but that the significance is due to his concerns, actions and words, not mine.
My life is insignificant compared to the struggle for free speech and against oppression in general but my describing the effect Rushdie has had on my life doesn’t reduce the significance of that, of him or of the tragedy and outrage of his being attacked. Quite the reverse, I’d hope.
It seems to me that Sarkar’s tweet does all of those things.
That whole tweet should have ended right before the first comma.