Homocon

'Da Vinci Code' Court Case Opens in London

Proving that there's no such thing as success without an accompanying posse of envy, jealousy and downright hostility, the author of The Da Vinci Code is being sued for copyright infringement for the third time! Two previous charges of copyright infringement brought against Dan Brown have been dismissed by a New York Judge, yet apparently Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," think the third time might be the charm.

To back up their charge of plagiarism, Baigent and Leigh argue that Brown's wife high-lighted her copy of their book extensively, which should give pause to any grad student feverishly composing his thesis. It's almost to the point where if a successful writer has even dared to read someone else's novel, poem, script, essay, article, what have you, he or she is sure to face a lawsuit screaming "copyright infringement -- MINE MINE MINE!"

Brown has sold 40 million copies of his novel, which is like the sweet whiff of honey to a horde of lesser talented and dung-dining flies. As any hard-working businessman will tell you, the quickest way to find yourself in a lawsuit is to make money -- and maybe in this case, the only way a couple of talentless hacks can make bank is to sue someone who knows how to write, especially when there's a $100 million dollar movie scheduled to come out in the next few months and they're betting the studio will press for a settlement just to make the PR disaster of a lawsuit go away.

Posted by at 5:23 PM | Permalink

"The First Amendment offers no guarantee of a peaceful, unwounded inner child."

What makes a certain group of people "a protected class" anyway? Am I, as a gay male, considered a member of the protected? If so, what and who am I being protected from? Because I'm gay, am I assumed to be so weak and infantile by straight liberals that I require shelter from all criticisms leveled against me for willfully choosing to live outside the traditional and historic structures of Western society? Is this why Gene Shalit got shouted down by GLAAD for having the temerity to suggest that the psycho-sexual behavior of a fictional gay character in a Hollywood movie might appear more than a little unbalanced? Have we been so ruined by the Peace Love and Feelings generation that we're now unable, as a society, to deal with the reality of differeng opinions? Jesus H. Christ -- did mommy and daddy just not love everybody enough?!

The only thing important to me is that I have the freedom to make my own choices and pursue my own happiness, freedoms which the U.S. Constitution already provides for me as a United States citizen. There are no constitutional or legal protections from criticism, insults, negative vibes or Gene Shalit reviews, and the likes of Penn State's Intolerance Policy, along with GLAAD's recent public footstomping, dovetails a bit too neatly with the Don't Talk Back philosophy behind Sharia for my free, gay and Western comfort.

ADDENDUM:
Needless to say, I'm very happy with this:

"Denmark's largest daily was honored with the Victor Prize for "having opened everyone's eyes by showing how easy it is to introduce cracks in freedom of expression and how so-called political correctness is infiltrating what we believe to be inalienable rights," Hans Engell, the editor of tabloid Ekstra Bladet which awards the prize, said during a prize ceremony in Copenhagen late on Thursday."

And here is a quote from Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that has drawn such harsh criticism for simply printing cartoons about Islam:

"Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy."

If only the New York Times possessed an editor with as much commitment to the value of Western democracy.

ADDENDUM 2:
It's for the disarmingly frank moments like this that I read Blonde Sagacity:

"I think the fantasy has ended for me... I think I want our boys home... I am pretty damn sure I don't want another American death for people that are ungrateful and unwilling to emerge from the 13th century. If it gets out of hand there --and another pre-9/11 Afghanistan emerges...let's just bomb the shit out of it and call it a day."

This is called "weariness", and it's beginning to creep into even the staunchest supporters for democratizing the Middle East. We're told to value strangers in a strange land while sacrificing the ones we hold dear -- it's difficult to grasp and harder to hold, things fall apart . . . mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Posted by at 11:26 AM | Permalink

German court convicts man for insulting Islam

I find it incredible that we're even living in a world where allegedly Western democracies sentence their citizens to jail time for non-violent expressions of a politically incorrect opinion. How is it possible that in a European nation, one of the presumptive beacons of intellectual and philosophical rigor, it's become illegal to say that you're so angry with violent Islamists that you'd like to wipe your ass with their entire religious belief system?

And don't get me started on the invisible Islamic moderates, though George Bush keeps telling me they exist -- sometimes I feel like I'm Sally in the pumpkin patch, waiting in vain for a non-existent creature to finally show itself because someone I'd like to trust assures me that it's real and about to appear at any moment.

Yet how appropriate that Yahoo's URL for the news story is "crime_religion_germany" -- though the allies removed Hitler from Germany over half a century ago, it behooves us to remember that it wasn't just one single individual responsible for the holocaust, the invasion of nation after nation, or the repeated bombing of Britain. I suppose the New-Age, New-School explanation for the collaboration of Germany's citizenry in a program of worldwide domination is that the population which crowded around Hitler and saluted him in droves was simply victimized, oppressed and traumatized by his lethal charisma (much like Arianna Huffington must have felt towards a certain gay, conservative, Republican, oil-rich multi-millionaire) . . . yes, that might explain the cheering throngs in the streets, but it certainly doesn't excuse them.

Nor does it excuse the same nation of jailing a 61 year old business man for claiming that the Koran is a cookbook for terrorists, especially considering Islamist terrorists just finished bombing a historic mosque in Baghdad in a deliberate attempt to instigate a civil war and thereby destroy any progress towards Western style cultural and religious freedom foisted upon a Middle Eastern population by the U.S. Military because said population couldn't find it within themselves to establish these same freedoms on their own.

*Whew* -- that was a long sentence. Pardon me while I rest a sec, but don't forget that point I made about lethal charisma and how it doesn't excuse even a passively collaborative population of anything.

But it's all Israel's fault anyway, dontchya know (or probably some godawful whore's fault).

Ugh -- where's a good wall to topple when you need one?

Posted by at 3:57 PM | Permalink

Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years

When societies are so afraid of ideas, no matter how innocuous (cartoons) or ridiculous (holocaust denial) that they punish them with death and/or imprisonment, then the people living in those societies are not free.

Hate Speech laws in the United States (plus the McCain Feingold Act which limits a citizen's ability to contribute to political campaigns, effectively blocking successful efforts at launching alternative national parties) are an example of the encroaching regulation of free speech for America's citizens. I don't want to see us end up like Saudi Arabia or Austria where voicing an undesirable opinion about religion, social history or race is a criminal offense -- facing social criticism for public dissent is a natural consequence of shooting off one's big mouth (a consequnce that your garden variety lib continuously confuses with "oppression"), but criminal prosecution is out of the question. Gods and humans are both more than capable of surviving disrespect, and should we criminally prosecute social disagreement or religious dissent, we would be inviting philosophical and intellectual destitution.

And I can't believe I hyper-linked Wonkette . . .

Posted by at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Any questions?

ADDENDUM
Because a bubble exists to be pricked.

Posted by at 4:30 PM | Permalink