Author: terencef

Where is the line between satire and hate speech?

Who gets to define it? What should be the consequences of crossing it?

One is legal, one is not. The first is often brilliant commentary, the other is just hate.

The massacre — there is no other word for it — at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris has forced editors all around the world to confront the question as they covered the story and chose to either publish the cartoons that were so incendiary to Muslims or not. That choice arose again today as the new issue of Charlie Hebdo hit the stands in France with another apparent depiction of the Prophet Muhammed on the cover.

“Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie,” the Prophet says on the cover, beneath the headline “All is forgiven.” The cover was certainly gentler than many of the previously published Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirizing Muslim extremism, but it will doubtless provoke many fundamentalist Muslims nevertheless.

The New York Times, which had declined to publish most of the earlier cartoons, did not print the cover. The Washington Post withheld the inflammatory cartoons from its pages but ran the cover image to illustrate a Paul Farhi story examining the editorial decisions of The Post and others.

The Post’s reasoning, said the newspaper’s executive editor, Martin Baron, was not to publish images that are “deliberately, pointedly, needlessly” offensive.
The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, told the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that he wrestled with the question of whether to publish the most offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons, worrying that to do so could expose its foreign correspondents to danger. He ultimately decided against running the cartoons and the cover with the explanation: “We do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities.”

Meanwhile, several online publications, including The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Gawker and Vox, reproduced a sampling of Charlie Hebdo cartoons, while the television networks and CNN declined to do so.

Different organizations, different decisions.

Among the editors and producers who declined to run the cartoons, the red line seemed to be images that gratuitously, unnecessarily offend. On the other hand, many cartoonists argue that their satire is toothless and even pointless if it does not offend somebody’s sensibilities. The late, great Herb Block argued that his job was to draw blood with his pen, and he often did. Can today’s reader really understand the Charlie Hebdo controversy without seeing the most offensive cartoons?

So, again, where is the line between acceptable satire and unacceptable hate speech? Is it in the eye of the viewer or reader? Was the infamous picture, “Piss Christ,” depicting a plastic crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist Andres Serrano’s urine that caused such a controversy in 1987, over the line? Was it hate when a Danish publication ignited an international furor in 2005 by publishing satirical images of the Prophet?

What is free speech and what is needless provocation? Should religious sensibilities be more protected than racial, ethnic or national feelings?

These are thorny, difficult questions that today’s editors are grappling with this week and will again in the future.

We should all celebrate today with Don Edwards, the gifted, passionate liberal beacon in Congress for three-plus decades, who is celebrating his 100th birthday at his home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, surrounded by family and friends. He’ll be fielding phone calls from all over the country and enjoying cake with several generations of children and grand and great grand children. If he looks out the french doors at the end of his living room, he’ll see the blue Pacific rolling onto Carmel Beach.

His has been a remarkable life of accomplishment, commitment, adventure, romance, travel, friendship and love. Born on January 6, 1915 to a solidly Republican family in San Jose, California, he became one of the leading Democrats in Congress and American life. At various times, he was a champion golfer, Naval officer, FBI agent, successful businessman, distinguished member of Congress for 34 years, husband, father, mentor and friend. He was a much-married man, but the great love of his life, Edie Wilkie, preceded him in death, despite being 30 years his junior. They were great together.

Don appreciated the irony in life. When, fresh out of Stanford, he won the California Amateur golf title, he went to his father and told him he wanted to turn pro and play golf for a living. His father said: ”Don’t be ridiculous, there will never be any money in golf. Go to law school.”

And Don did.

That, and more.

Happy Birthday, Don.

Some of the fun ebbed out of politics and public life yesterday with the death of Bob Strauss. And some of the harmony, too.

Lawyer, diplomat, negotiator, political insider, consummate fund-raiser, silver-tongued devil — all the titles and descriptions fit Bob Strauss, who died in Washington, his adopted home town, at 95 on March 19.

I knew him best as Democratic National Chairman, special trade representative and Middle East negotiator during the Carter Administration. When he was raising money, big money, for Carter’s 1980 re-election campaign, I accompanied him on a cross-country swing to report a New York Times Magazine cover story.

It was a marvel to see how effortlessly he could talk captains of industry out of their cash, always with a twinkle in his eye. “Gentlemen,” he began before a gathering of heavy hitters at the exclusive Los Angeles Club, “I am out here for cold-blooded political reasons…”

Strauss had been born in a tiny, Last Picture Show sort of town in Texas, spent his 30’s and 40’s practicing law and making millions in Dallas, his 50’s raising money for the Democratic National Committee and his early 60’s as an all-purpose Mr. Fix-it for President Carter. Later, he advised President Reagan and in his 70’s, went to Moscow as U.S. Ambassador immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union representing President George H.W. Bush.

He loved money and the luxuries it could provide. He told me that he made more money in Dallas as a lawyer and banker than he could ever spend, but he gave it a try with his fancy suits, Watergate penthouse and personal limousine and driver. Strauss caused a minor scandal during the famously cheap Carter Administration by always flying first class, in violation of government regulations. Asked at a White House briefing if he was going to continue booking himself into the front of the plane, he smiled and said: “Yes, until they invent something better.”

Bob and Helen Strauss kept a large home in Dallas and would fly there most weekends from Washington. Neither one of them liked to swim, but he built a large pool behind the house. “I like to mix a martini, go outside in the evening, turn on the lights” he explained, “and say to myself, ‘Strauss, you one rich sombitch.’”

Strauss prided himself as the ultimate conciliator, and indeed he could sweet-talk the most combative politicians into his point of view. He wasn’t always successful, of course, Carter lost his re-election bid, the Middle East is still a mess and Russia is not very cooperative these days, but he always enjoyed the game.

No regrets, he told me, “none at all.”

It was around 8 p.m. on one of the last days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the phone rang in my room at the Tel Aviv Hilton. The caller was an Israeli Army major who introduced himself as an aide de camp to General Ariel Sharon. Would I like to interview the General, whose armored units had crossed the Suez Canal and encircled the Egyptian Third Army on the western bank? I would. Good, said the major, I’ll pick you up at 4 a.m.

I was the Israel bureau chief for The New York Times at the time, and Sharon had a message he wanted to get across to the Israeli military command in Tel Aviv. They weren’t listening, so Sharon, whose death at 85 was announced over the weekend, was pulling a classic end run.

It was late morning when we arrived at the General’s command trailer on the bank of the Canal. I and a couple of other journalists were about to get the Gospel according to Arik, as he was universally known. But first, he played the perfect host, setting out tins of smoked oysters and grasses of brandy, and gossiping about some of the other commanders. He wore a bloodied bandage wrapped theatrically around his head, the result not of a bullet, but a tank turret that turned at the wrong moment. He was charming, animated, funny, irreverent, pleased with himself and his men, and crystal clear.

The gospel from Arik was simple: he had trapped the Egyptian Third Army, he should be allowed to finish them off. And take the town of Suez. Then his tanks could roll on to the gates of Cairo. The problem, he said, lay with the commanders back in Tel Aviv. They had told him to stand still. The government was worried about the Americans, who were negotiating a ceasefire at the United Nations. He didn’t use the word “wimps” when describing his superiors, but that was the message.

It was vintage Sharon. He didn’t win that argument, but he employed every maneuver he could think of. When the war was over, Sharon was one of the few Israeli commanders to emerge with his reputation enhanced.

Later, he accumulated political capital with the Israeli right as Agriculture Minister, building and expanding settlements in the occupied territories; and as a tough and uncompromising Defense Minister. His brutal and controversial prosecution of the 1982 war in Lebanon damaged his standing with some Israelis and enhanced it with others.

As Prime Minister in the early 2,000’s, he first shocked his right wing supporters by conceding the inevitability of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and then, famously withdrawing unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2004, destroying the settlements he had originally authorized and pulling out altogether. In 2005, he fractured the Israeli right and formed a new, more centrist party, Kadima, dedicated to further territorial withdrawal.

Was this a great reversal, a Nixon-to-China moment? Had the man who spent his entire career punishing the Palestinians, gone soft? Not really. He had simply decided, as prime ministers before and after him, that Israel could only survive as a Jewish state if it disentangled itself from the Palestinians, by negotiation if possible, unilaterally if not. He was changing tactics, not his strategic objective.

Sharon was planning more disengagement from the occupied West Bank in 2006 when a mild stroke, followed by a massive one 17 days later, silenced his voice. To save his life, the doctors put him into a deep coma from which he never emerged.

His death brings the Sharon legacy back into the forefront of the Israeli national consciousness and confronts the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with an awkward dilemma. Bibi has publicly endorsed the concept of a Palestinian state, but done little to enable it. On the contrary, he is the master of the status-quo, with none of the decisiveness that was the Sharon brand, nor the flexibility that Yitzhak Rabin displayed at the end of his life.

Sharon’s passing brings the contrast into sharp relief.

Where They Drink Whiskey in the Morning
A cruise around the Hebrides, the Scottish islands that inspired Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

In 1773, Samuel Johnson–poet, essayist, and London’s literary light–and his biographer, James Boswell, passed through the rugged, starkly beautiful Hebridean Islands just off Scotland’s western coast. Their famous tour produced not one but two waspish journals that remain in print today.

Dr. Johnson, who was 64 and had completed his monumental Dictionary of the English Language, was a bit of a whiner, complaining occasionally of bad food and uncomfortable lodgings. No such suffering for us aboard the Glen Massan, one of two luxuriously converted 82-foot wooden-hulled, double-ended trawlers that originally fished the western coast of Ireland and now take passengers on cruises through the Hebrides.

The trawlers make up the entire fleet of Majestic Cruises, a small-ship line that is at the opposite end of the cruising universe from Carnival or Royal Caribbean. Not unlike the gulets that ply Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, the boats include six comfortable cabins, each with a private bath; a roomy main saloon for meals and lounging; outdoor decks fore and aft; and a spacious wheelhouse where all are welcome. The crew consists of a skipper, an engineer, a boatswain, and a chef.

Our floating house party consisted of six couples, all longtime sailing friends. We split the cost of 17,000 pounds ($27,300) for the week, which included superb meals and wines with dinner–not cheap, but nothing in Scotland is these days.

As Dr. Johnson noted, there is no such thing as bad weather in the Hebrides, only inadequate clothing. So we brought our fleece and foul-weather jackets, and we used them every day. We also had periods of warm sun, and in late May, beautiful sunsets that lingered past 9 p.m.

To find the history, mythology, and literary legend that are around every corner in the Hebrides, we anchored just off Erraid Island, where the shipwrecked teenage hero of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 18th-century adventure story Kidnapped washed ashore. We stopped at Iona, the soft, green island where an Irish scholar and monk, Saint Columba, arrived in the sixth century to Christianize the pagan Scots; the abbey he established is still extant and well worth a visit.

The chief attraction on the Isle of Staffa is Fingal’s Cave, dark and dramatic, on the southeastern face of the steep island. Water rushes in and out of the cathedral-size opening–a sound that inspired Felix Mendelssohn to compose his Hebrides overture. The cave, named for a mythical Irish warrior and giant, has been an adventure destination for years, attracting notable visitors, including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, and, of course, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Tradition holds that good fortune comes to those who touch the back wall of the deep cave. Johnson and Boswell approached Staffa by boat, but, as Boswell noted, they “could not land upon it, the surge was so high on its rocky coast.” We had better luck. With relatively smooth water and a low tide, we could take the tender–the crew called it the “jolly boat”–inside the towering cave, motor carefully up to the back wall, and, one by one and gingerly, put a hand on it.

Climbing Staffa is a great experience. Over the centuries, wind and rain have eroded basalt formations into intricate columned and stepped perches that make perfect nesting niches for a large colony of seagulls. The view from the windblown, grassy summit, looking across the smaller islands scattered off Mull, is stunning. (A set of steep steps has been carved into the cliffs by the National Trust, which, being Scottish, invites donations to be dropped into a hole in a rock.)

Not surprisingly, the weather dictates the itinerary in the Hebrides. Dr. Johnson and Boswell had to change their route when the weather turned, and so did we. One morning the marine forecast included gale-force northwesterlies, so instead of heading north to the island of Skye, we stayed in the more protected waters around Muck and Mull.

When Dr. Johnson visited Muck 240 years ago, he took precise notes in what became his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland:

This little island, however it be named, is of considerable value … Half of this little dominion the laird [lord] retains in his own hand, and on the other half, live one hundred and sixty persons, who pay their rent by exported corn. What rent they pay, we were not told and could not decently inquire.
Today, the population is 27, plus hundreds of woolly sheep. The MacEwen family, which owns the island now, is placing advertisements asking young couples to move to Muck to help keep the island school open. We were not told and could not decently inquire about the rent, but the welcome package includes beautiful open spaces and all the peace and quiet you could ask for.

Honesty seems to be the prevailing policy on Muck. The one shop, which features handmade tea cozies, coasters, and beautiful wool rugs that sell for 97 pounds ($150) each, is open all day in the summer months, untended. Drop your money in the honor box.

We had several more days of cruising and hiking and refining our collective taste for single-malt scotch, which seems to be the principal product of the Hebrides. In Journey, first published in 1775, Dr. Johnson notes the local custom:

A man of the Hebrides … as soon as he appears in the morning, swallows a glass of whiskey. Yet they are not a drunken race, at least I never was present at much intemperance; but no man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram.
Perhaps that’s the magic of the Hebrides, just as Dr. Johnson said.

.

Where They Drink Whiskey in the Morning
A cruise around the Hebrides, the Scottish islands that inspired Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Robert Louis Stevenson