Colleen McCullough was a best-selling novelist, and more.

Before becoming a full-time author, McCullough was a researcher at Yale medical school. And in between her time in New Haven and her global literary pursuits, she established the neurophysiology department at Syndey’s Royal North Shore hospital. She published her first novel, Tim, in 1974; her last, Bittersweet, in 2013. She was still working on a sequel when she died yesterday, at age 77, in a hospital on Norfolk Island.

But who cares about all that, amirite? Was she hot?? Was she gorgeous, was she thin, did she wear clothes well, did she decorate the place? Or did she fall down on all that?

The second sentence of her obit in a rag called the Australian comes clean on her aesthetic failure:

Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless a woman of wit and warmth.

Well now how can that be? If you’re a woman who is plain of feature and certainly overweight, then obviously you’re also witless and cold. That’s god’s plan – you have beautiful women who are also warm and clever, and you have ugly women who are hostile and boring. It’s more fair that way.

Men, of course, are allowed to look like unmade beds. That’s god’s plan too.

Think Progress is scathing, although not really scathing enough.

This is the sort of idiocy you’d think someone at the paper might catch. An editor, perhaps. Someone on the copy desk. Literally any human who saw it. But nope, here it is, and we can’t even blame the punishing publish-first-think-later evils of the internet, for as you can see from the highlighted image above, this appeared in a Traditional Legacy Print Newspaper Made From Only The Finest Trees.

Well at least Twitter is making lemonade of this, under the hashtag #myozobituary.

I love Craig Ferguson’s.

Although a shouty malodorous vulgarian he nevertheless enjoyed most episodes of house hunters international. #MyOzObituary

But there are a lot of good ones. All by the beautiful of course; the other kind can’t do funny.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on What does Silicon Valley think of women?

The Newsweek cover works for me as satire, and I’ll explain in terms of syntax or form. By syntax, I mean a claim is equally valid in the active or passive voice. By form, I mean (for example) that jazz musicians call the chord changes to I Got Rhythm “rhythm changes” and (for example) most of the Charlie Parker tunes I know off the top of my head are launching pads to improvise over “rhythm changes” being a 32-bar AABA form.

All of us can instantly parse a single-frame editorial cartoon that shows a bad person behaving badly. My analogy here is to the active voice, to show (for example) a greedy narcissistic Wall Street person gaming the system for personal gain but a net loss to society. That syntax or form says, “This person is behaving badly.”

But there’s another syntax or form that some people have trouble parsing, like (for example) The New Yorker Obama fist bump cover (with the US flag burning in the fireplace). The object of the satire is the bullshit I heard on the radio and read online in Obama’s first Presidential election that Obama is a Muslim (delivered with the implicit understanding that Muslims are anti-American). In this syntax or form, the satire mocks anybody who would think the things shown in the cartoons. In a cartoon with this this syntax or form, really:
• The Obamas are NOT Islamist militants.
• Christiane Taubira is NOT a monkey.
• Boko Haram’s rape victims are NOT demanding welfare money.
• Women in Silicon Valley are NOT faceless.

I respect Anne @6/8 for italicizing a preference for cartoons to show the subject of satire directly, like a preference to use the active voice over passive voice. The Newsweek cover says, “Women are disrespected by Silicon Valley”, and someone could wish for the same claim in the active voice, “Silicon Valley disrespects women”. I respect Anne @6/8 for italicizing a preference that stops short of saying one syntax or form is invalid or unethical, which some commenters seem to say here.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Chris Moos draws up a catalogue of the more wrongheaded responses to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He counts five of them:

the reflexive smearer, the moral relativist, the condescending bonhomme, the politician-cum-theologian and the winner of the competition, the Islamist abuser.

The reflexive smearer says the CH cartoonists and CH were and are racist.

As David Paxton points out, this usually came with an attempt at “root-causism“, a contextualisation of the murders in “wars against the Muslim world”, and an in-depth investigation of the alleged views, sensitivities and ‘culture’ of the murderers.

Since most British commentators have no understanding of French satire, politics, or culture, they naturally did not afford the same courtesy to Charlie Hebdo. As a result, the French publication that has done the most to fight the fascist Front National, the Catholic Church, and anti-immigrant policies is presented as a “racist” publication that “had it coming”.

But but but…Edward Said something something colonialism something subaltern something something Orientalism.

2) The moral relativist – “Publish anti-Semitic cartoons, or you are a hypocrite”

False equivalences and whataboutery were the natural favourites of the moral relativist. For this to work, they simply needed to argue that Charlie Hebdo cartoons are racist or anti-Muslim (see above), then point to hate speech laws, and jump to the conclusion that those only protect Jews, not Muslims. As Glen Greenwald has bitterly complained, “why aren’t free speech crusaders calling for publication of anti-Semitic material in solidarity?”.

Let’s see…because Charlie Hebdo was and is not comparable to Der Stürmer? I think that’s why. That’s why I’m not, certainly.

Then there’s the equating of criticism of Islam with attacking Muslims. Then there’s explaining how fabulous Islam is.

My friend Kiran Opal has even invented a new word for this phenomenon: “kuffarsplaining“, or “telling Muslims (or ex-Muslims) that you, as a Western Non-Muslim, knows what Islam ‘really says’”.

By conclusion, this means of course that the murderers were not doing what they said they were doing – murdering the Charlie Hebdo journalists to “avenge the prophet Mohammed“.

Well what would they know about it?

And then there are the Islamists themselves. There is Dilly Hussain, for instance…

[I]n the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the iERA has teamed up with Dilly Hussain from 5pillars to launch a new campaign called “Don’t hate, debate!“.

Dilly Hussain starts off the video:

“In light of recent events in Paris, which has (sic!) led to the unfortunate death of ten journalists, again Muslims find themselves at the centre of attention regarding the whole freedom of speech debate and whether the prophet Mohammed should be satirised. […] How did freedom of speech become the right to offend, or the freedom to insult? And what does that mean for the basic interactions between humans?”

Indeed, how has freedom of speech become the “freedom to insult”? Luckily, Dilly Hussain, is in the best possible position to answer that question. When he is not editing articles for 5pillars, Dilly Hussain feels free to abuse, insult, humiliate and harass those who do not share his brand of Islamism. As with all Islamists, his preferred targets are Muslim minorities, Muslims who reject Islamism, and particularly Muslim women.

In Dilly Hussain’s world, “monkeys have [a] more legitimate claim to Islam than Ahmadis“. Women who question his quest for a “caliphate”, where non-Muslims are second-class citizens and women can be stoned for adultery, are referred to as “fat cows”, “fatties”, “pissheads, drunken liberal garbage” and “coconut sellouts“.

But Dilly Hussain’s greatest outbursts of hate are reserved for Muslim women, who he calls “Muslims” in inverted commas, or simply “airheads“. On the other hand, Muslims who challenge Islamists are “Uncle Tom sell outs” (see also here), “chamchas” (ass-kissers), the racist term “coconuts” (see also here), “apostates” (which is an implicit death threat for many Muslims) or “najus” (ritually unclean).

Nice guy.

And this is the quintessential response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Islamists ask for respect, while awarding none. They ask for historical figures to be immunised from satire, while mocking and denigrating anyone who does not share their beliefs. They humiliate anyone who opposes them, but ask for the right not to be offended.

If there is one lesson from the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it is this one: Islamists do not want to debate, they want to hate.

No amount of smearing, relativising, condescending, kuffarsplaining, or self-censorsoring will change that.

Defending the Kouachi brothers is not defending Muslims, it’s insulting them. It implies that they are connected. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another win for the bullies. The Telegraph has the story.

An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition after a Muslim group warned of possible violence in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Via Facebook

The French-Algerian artist, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, withdrew the work from an exhibition in a northern Paris suburb with a large Muslim population after an Islamic group told local authorities it could provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents”.

It is considered disrespectful to step on Muslim prayer ma[t]s with shoes.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Haroon Riaz, to quote his blurb at the Nation, is a Rawalpindi-based independent blogger and believes in promoting free speech and secularism. Comrade!

He points out that what’s happening to Raif could so easily have happened to him or you or me. I know. Boy do I know.

He says hardly anyone is talking about Raif in Pakistan.

[W]hat does this tell the world about us? Or about our leaders who took the trouble of protesting against the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but would dare not even think about the flogging of the Saudi blogger.

That those are some fucked-up priorities.

I know it is dangerous and sensitive to talk about anyone who has allegedly blasphemed, but let us put this case this way.

Let’s not even waste our time with the question whether Raif Badawi insulted Islam or not, and whether he should be punished for it or not, without giving up the defense of his right to.

But what if the law of the land requires your free expression about your society to be punished like this? Especially when half of the people in Pakistan want the country to turn into Saudi Arabia and the other half wants it to become Iran.

I don’t know what if. I can’t imagine what I would do.

What if you were arrested and publicly flogged for wondering why Ahmadis are persecuted in Pakistan?

What if you were penalized for wondering why Hazara and Shia are being targeted and publicly naming the culprits?

What if you were wondering about the unjust theocratic influences on the law and the constitution, and thereforeon the society?

What if questioning the theocratic parts of your constitution would put you on a trial for treason?

The kind of opinions that could so easily be projected to be insulting to religion and, therefore, the religious figures, you never know.

Raif Badawi’s opinions were not too different to these seemingly innocuous political inquiries.

Exactly. The humane and liberal thoughts are ferociously punished, while the sadistic torture of humane and liberal thoughts is state policy. It’s sick. It’s a sick inversion of how humans ought to act and live.

There is a reason why Raif Badawi matters so much.

It could have so easily been you and me.

Take care of yourself, Haroon.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Fridays are prime time for Islamist violence – sometimes after prayers, as with the flogging of Raif Badawi, and sometimes during prayers, as yesterday at a mosque in Sindh province.

Funerals have taken place in southern Pakistan for the victims of a suicide attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers which police say killed at least 60 people.

Dozens were also wounded in the attack in Sindh province’s Shikarpur district, making it one of the worst sectarian attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

Sunni militants linked to the Taliban said they carried out the attack.

They were careful to do the worst damage they could.

“The bomber selected a place in the mosque that would cause huge destruction,” Raja Umar Khitab, a police official in Sindh’s counter-terror department, told the AFP news agency.

Mr Khitab said the bomb contained steel pellets, ball bearings and shrapnel to maximise the damage.

This god hates people.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Zineb El-Rhazoui was in Montreal the other day to talk about and fundraise for Charlie Hebdo.

According to El-Rhazoui, the most elementary defence against the rise of fundamentalism is to hammer home the point that religion holds no sway with the state .

“Secularism as far as I know, is the only way to permit everyone to live in the same society, even if people are different,” said El-Rhazoui.

“Islam needs to submit to secularism and it also needs to get a sense of humour.”