Posted on 05/05/2015 3:33:07 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Via Mediaite, this is a lame answer but not as lame as some commenters in Headlines are treating it, I think. They’re not backing away from the Pam Geller event because they’re afraid of being targeted by jihadis. These guys will be targeted forever, whether or not they continue to blaspheme Islam, and they know it. Jean-Baptiste Thoret, the magazine’s film critic and the man in the glasses here, told an audience a few days ago that the surviving cartoonist who drew the “Je suis Charlie” cover is now a de facto prisoner with constant armed protection even though he’s sworn off drawing Mohammed anymore. Tonight’s PEN event, where Thoret and editor Gerard Biard will receive an award, is being guarded by the NYPD’s intelligence unit and a private security firm, with background checks conducted on all of the 800+ guests, simply because these two guys will be there. They gain nothing — from jihadis — by distinguishing themselves from Geller. They’re still on the hit list, in perpetuity.
What’s driving them, I think, isn’t fear of violent reprisal by hugging Geller but maybe some fear of class reprisals. They’ve been criticized by dozens of dopey left-wing PEN members for their “racist” cartoons disparaging supposedly powerless Muslims, a minority position within the literary world (I think) but one with some influential adherents. If they made a show of solidarity with Geller, a right-wing provocateur and critic of Islam who’s detested by America’s political class, it would feed the idea that Charlie Hebdo is less about slaughtering sacred cows across French culture and more about being anti-Muslim. Muslims may already see them that way, but for the literati to swing around to that position would leave Charlie Hebdo with no friends except on the right — a lonely place to be in a country as left-wing as France, especially for an editorial staff as left-wing as CH’s. The point of this answer is to signal (a) that Charlie Hebdo aspires to something more highbrow than Geller’s Muslim-baiting, even if their mode of satire is often lowbrow, and (b) they hold no special animus for Islam, their willingness to defy Islamic norms notwithstanding. All of which would be fine, except that it was literally just yesterday that Biard was grousing, justifiably, that the western world can’t expect Charlie Hebdo to shoulder the load of defending free speech and the right to blaspheme alone. Well, here’s Pam Geller willing to help shoulder that load, at considerable personal risk to herself. A little recognition and appreciation of that fact, at least, would have gone a long way here.
The full interview airs tonight. We’ll see if they manage to commend her at least for trying to help fill the void created by the same western publications that have abandoned the field to Charlie Hebdo by blacking out images of Mohammed in their own pages.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
It’s been downhill for the Frogs since they gave us the Statue of Liberty.
My understanding is that the journolists at Hedbo are leftist scum. Even the slaughter of some of their co-workers by muslim nutjobs has not been enough to change that...
How “right-wing” can Geller be? Isn’t she pro-abortion?
They must have given away their testes at the same time.
Paris is not Texas?
They’re not called “Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys” for nothing.
They have shown more balls than Obama in opposing Iran and fighting ISIS, but that’s a low bar to get over.
Being willing to defend your rights or your country and culture in today’s world gets you tagged “right wing extremist”.
If you start bowing to muslim sensibilties you will always be bowing.
That’s in their book, too.
We must all submit or die.
Muslim *in*sensibilities
However, she is more valiant than 99% of the people in this country when facing off against the isalmothugs. She has found an enemy suitable for her steel. For this she has my undying admiration.
The trouble starts when the get incensed. And it doesn’t seem to take much. Everything about infidels incenses them.
Actually, the Editor had an armed bodyguard on site who was also killed.
Apparently the Editor failed to hire a Texan.
Someone should post a photo of the Paris cop just standing there, with NO gun, waiting to be slaughtered, while in Texas, they took care of business, one cop, one gun, took down two Jihadist punks..hardly broke a sweat
The jizlamos were hoping to take out Geert Wilders, too.
Yes, but Texas was not France, thank God.
True. The difference is in France they had to hire new staff to replace those murdered, whereas in TEXAS the muzzlemen will have to find replacements for their dead jihadis.
Cowboys-2
Jihadis-0!
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