A new law for our times
2 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Tuesday, May 15 at Tuesday, May 15, 2007.
Tim Blair invented "Blair's Law" - which he describes as "the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force." An example of this is the sub-culture of hardcore feminists who are pro-Burqa.
If Blair's Law identifies how idiots across the political spectrum can come together in a big happy clusterfuck of convenient friendships, then let me introduce my own new law. Gara's Law states that:
This law, like Blair's, brings together everybody from hardcore neoconservatives like Donald Rumsfeld, all the way through to regions big time dictators, as shown yesterday with the great Islamic Revolutionary Government of Iran.
Do you need a 100% solid acid test for whether somebody has truly good intentions for the people of the Middle East? Ask them how they feel about Al-Jazeera. Their answer will actually explain how they feel about democracy and free speech in the Arab world....
If Blair's Law identifies how idiots across the political spectrum can come together in a big happy clusterfuck of convenient friendships, then let me introduce my own new law. Gara's Law states that:
"The enemies of free speech and democracy in the Middle East have one thing in common. They all hate Al-Jazeera"
Do you need a 100% solid acid test for whether somebody has truly good intentions for the people of the Middle East? Ask them how they feel about Al-Jazeera. Their answer will actually explain how they feel about democracy and free speech in the Arab world....
perhaps I misunderstood, but...
...calling a feminist "pro-burqua" because she believes that the choice to wear a burqua should be left to the individual seems to be about as helpful as labelling a woman who wants the right to make her own reproductive decisions as "pro-abortion". Isn't it all about freedom and choice?
Megan,
I think it's more like female genital mutilation - "mainstream" feminists would argue that a woman can never really make an informed, "free" choice to circumcise themselves or their young child - even if women has the option/right to do whatever they want to their own bodies or the bodies of their children.
Same goes for prostitution, and I think you agree with me there, if I our Dublin conversations right...
I think most feminists are pretty uncomfortable with the kind of societies that lead to women needing to be covered head to toe to stay "respectable". And I understand that for a lot of feminists, sympathy with the much screwed-over Muslim world means that they arent too motivated to join all the other assholes who like to kick around Muslims for whatever reasons.
But at the weird fringes of the feminist / cultural relativist movement, there are people who choose to actually defend the Burqa as a feminist-friendly thing, which is just crazy whichever way you look at it.
Another good example of the weird collusion between otherwise diametrically insane groups is the way that a subset of fundamentalist Christians are also heavily Zionist, for a bunch of weird reasons...