Taibbi: MSM hypocrisy on Charlie Hebdo? 'Je ne suis pas Charlie!'

I'm gonna have to go ahead and kind of disagree with Taibbi on this one. And I'm gonna do it, first, by describing a Charlie Hebdo cartoon, not showing it to you, which is what annoys Taibbi in the first place:

So, imagine a cartoonish "congo" line of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (the latter depicted, quite humorously, I admit, as a Triangle with an All-Seeing Eye in it, a la the U.S. dollar), in that order, each sodomizing the one in front of Him. The cartoon was supposed to lampoon, I suppose, those Christians who were opposed to gay marriage.

Oh, OK, if you must see it, look here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/charlie-hebdo-front-covers#.ydRWyo7Rb

Besides that, Charlie Hebdo seems fond of depicting Arabs as big-nosed, towel-headed oafs and Jews as, well, pretty much the same, except with black hats and squiggly sideburns.  And black people as monkeys. This goes to show, says the lib'rul media, that CH are equal-opportunity offenders. Which not only gets them off the hook, but somehow exalts them. ... Wait, what?

My cultural bona fides: I am not a reverent person; and I possess an above-average sense of humor, even a love of dark and inappropriate jokes. But this stuff just isn't that funny. Still I doubt myself, because of cultural differences. Is it just me? Because all I keep hearing is how much of an institution this caricature magazine is in France; how it represents a quintessentially French irreverence that cuts across the political spectrum, class, education and age groups. It would be as if -- don't laugh! -- Mad Magazine were on every American's night stand. 

OK, if that's really the case, then I call a no-call. A truce. I won't judge Charlie Hebdo out of ignorance. But I'm certainly not going to say, "Je Suis Charlie." Because I'm not. I don't get it. Je ne comprends pas! I don't get this irreverent brand of 14-year-old fart and dick humor that is, the media assures me, in fact very clever, and very French. 

The medieval forebears of Charlie Hebdo?

And now on to Taibbi's main argument, that the Western press were hypocritical pussies for not publishing some offending Charlie Hebdo cartoons for their readers to give them a flavor of what they publish.

First, it's important to note: We don't know exactly which cartoons offended the alleged terrorist murderers. That's not a small detail. Were western editors supposed to select and publish a bunch (and how many?) of anti-Muslim or -Arab cartoons to, like, give their readers context? 

Second, related to that, the story here is not Charlie Hebdo's cartoons. If that were a story worthy of the Western press, we would have heard about them already. The story is how alleged Arab-Muslim terrorists allegedly murdered Charlie Hebdo staff and an Arab-Muslim police guard.  

Third, Taibbi cries "hypocrisy" and "double standard" that some U.S. papers once published (and have maintained in their archives) photos of the offensive-to-Christians Piss Christ art installation, but not any anti-Muslim Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Taibbi's assumed reasoning being, the media isn't afraid to piss off prudish Christians, (and probably enjoys it, too), but it is scared to offend scary hard-line Muslims who might shoot them.

So here's the difference: Piss Christ was a legitimate national news story; and whatever some obscure French caricature magazine published one week (certainly more of the same) is not. (I've seen similar cartoons in British lads mags -- NYT, get the republishing rights, and don't skip the tits!)  Back to point #2. The story is not the cartoons, it's the murders.

Fourth, in this age of the Internet, does Taibbi actually think that readers of the New York Times really can't find, in about 2 seconds, examples of Charlie Hebdo cartoons if they really want to? This isn't 1975 anymore, when the NYT and Washington Post held the keys to the nation's information. The NYT Ed's. simply decided they weren't going to be one of the ones to show us this stuff. Is that really so cowardly and hypocritical?   

Finally, I just don't agree that these cartoons are striking a blow against terrorism, or for freedom. Yes, Charlie Hebdo enjoys the right, the freedom to publish their puerile French fart humor... But an Aegis missile in the heart of global Islamism Charlie Hebdo is not. It's just not. I'm sorry.

On a personal note, even though he's wrong this time, it's good to see Taibbi back where he belongs, at Rolling Stone, after playing at media start-ups with dickhead billionaires.

UPDATE: Here's an op-ed saying much the same thing: "#JeSuisCharlie? No, I'm Really Not Charlie Hebdo--And Here's Why."  

Cartoons Are Worth Fighting For

By Matt Taibbi

January 8, 2015 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/yes-virginia-cartoons-are-worth-fighting-for-20150108

DW: Russia's financing of EU far-right parties revealed

If you watched any of the Timothy Snyder videos on YouTube then you know that Russia's project to dismantle the EU is now out in the open. This project involves not just moral and diplomatic support, it involves Russian financing for *far-right political parties in the EU.

Putin's goal is to revert Europe to what he sees as its "natural" state, circa the 1930s: a group of mutually suspicious, squabbling nation-states that are largely ill-equipped to deal with Russia on a bilateral basis. The EU, by contrast, as the world's largest common market, is much better equipped to deal with relatively weak Russia, economically and diplomatically. 

* My American friends who don't follow European politics should understand that "far-right" and "conservative" parties in Europe are probably not kin with the Republican Party. Most are still to the left of the Democrats on most social and economic issues; their defining issues are anti-immigration, (France for French, Hungary for Hungarians, and so on...), "traditional" values (meaning anti-LGBT), and withdrawal from the EU.

Is the Kremlin financing Europe's right-wing populists?

November 29, 2014 |  Deutsche Welle

Many right-wing European political parties are anything but shy when it comes to showing their pro-Russian sentiments. Millions of euros have also been deposited by Russian banks in the pocket of France's Front National.

France's right-wing populist party, the Front National (FN), has denied claims in a media report which stated that they wanted to borrow 40 million euros ($50 million) from a Russian bank.

"This is fictitious, it's crazy," said party leader Marine Le Pen. "We have applied for nine million euros, and we got nine million euros."

Amongst other things, the Front National needs this financial top-up to organize its Saturday (29.11.2014) party congress in Lyon.

For a long time now, the Front National has been accused of receiving Russian financial support. The head of the bank is also close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Marine Le Pen flirts with Putin

With regards to political party funding in France, the National Front is in trouble, as they have allegedly received no loans from French banks. So the support from Russia has come in handy.

According to the Front National's European Member of Parliament (MEP), Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, the nine-million-euro loan was granted only because party leader Le Pen has a good relationship with Putin.

Marine Le Pen is a great critic of European sanctions against Russia. In interviews she has repeatedly stressed that she "admires Putin" and has accused the EU of pushing for a new Cold War. Le Pen is also critical of the French government for not delivering a warship to Russia because of the Ukraine crisis.

But Le Pen herself has also been subject to criticism.

"It's remarkable that a political party from the motherland of freedom can be funded by Putin's sphere - the largest European enemy of freedom," said Reinhard Bütikofer, an EU parliamentarian for the German Greens, in a DW interview. Putin, he says, is antagonizing European values by any possible means.

"But the fact that enemies of European freedom in Moscow are now doing business with Europe's radical right - that's a whole new can of worms," he warned.

In EU parliament, it's not only Le Pen and members of the National Front who have advocated Putin. Leader of the British right-wing UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, and MPs of the "Alternative for Germany" party have also made Russia-friendly comments.

Pro-Russian sentiment in the EU parliament

Although pro-Russian voices were previously heard more often amongst the EU parliament's left-wing parties, a study by Hungarian policy research institute Political Capital showed that 15 of the parliament's 24 right-wing populist parties were "open" to Russia.

That means Putin's nationalist and authoritarian leadership style is admired not only by the National Front but also Hungary's Jobbik party - an avowed admirer of Putin's power games - is suspected of being supported by the Kremlin. According to the party's members, the offensive in Crimea is "exemplary" - something they believe Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania could use to alter the Hungarian border.

Legal aftermath

Europe's radical right are by no means hiding that they want to weaken the European Union. It was this attitude that helped them to win votes at the last European election.

The scandal regarding the millions of funding, however, comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Front National.

Over the weekend, Le Pen is set to be re-elected as party leader - but the loan from the Russian bank could have legal consequences. French investigative judges have, in the meantime, been examining potentially illegal party funding in the party.

Austerity kills

"Austerity was designed to shrink debts. Now, three years after Europe's budget-cutting began, the evidence is in: severe, indiscriminate austerity is not part of the solution, but part of the problem -- and its human costs are devastating."

Europe's public health disaster: How austerity kills

By David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu

September 9, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/europes-public-health-disaster-how-austerity-kills/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

'Euro-socialism' never works...except when it does

Hmm... lower income taxes, bigger social safety net, smaller deficit.  How do they get away with it?!  It must be the wine.  

ZOMG! France!! Socialism!!!

By The Stig

August 14, 2012 | Daily Kos

URL: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/14/1120154/-ZOMG-France-Socialism

Sunday newsflash: France turning Socialist!

But wait, I'm confused.  Was France non-socialistic as of yesterday under Sarko but as of tomorrow it's bad?  Are there degrees of socialism?  Such as,  François Hollande is a 7 on the Socialist Scale of 1-10, with Lenin being a 10, and Sarkozy being a 5 and Obama being a __ ....?

International political economy is so complicated.  I think I'm just going to ignore this election and keep regarding France, and Europe as a whole, as socialistic, because that's so much easier to deal with.  

"Tonight, there are not two Frances. ... There is only one France, only one nation that is united with the same destiny," Hollande said.  Yeah, a socialist destiny.  Go sniff some artisanal cheese while you preside over a national strike for a 10-hour work week, François!

Hollande wins French presidential vote

May 6, 2012 | CNN

URL:  http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/06/world/europe/france-election/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Forbes: How France & Germany's health care compares

It's funny, conservative Forbes gets all the facts in the story right, but the article's sub-heading is clearly wrong. Anyway, read the article. Germany and France spend less of their GDP on health care, despite having MORE doctors per captia than in the U.S., and despite their citizens seeing a doctor almost twice as often as Americans. And without complaints of rationing or queuing.


A Health Care Journey Around Europe

By Anita Raghavan

September 2, 2009 Forbes.com

URL: http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/02/healthcare-spending-europe-business-healthcare-gdp.html?partner=alerts

Krugman: 'Obamacare' based on successfull Swiss model

The Swiss Menace

By Paul Krugman

August 16, 2009 | New York Times

It was the blooper heard round the world. In an editorial denouncing Democratic health reform plans, Investor's Business Daily tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance," because the National Health Service would consider his life "essentially worthless."

Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, [and is still alive! - J] was not amused.

[Investor's Business Daily is the Right's answer to Pravda. It is a total throwaway of lies and distortions. Reading it will make you dumber. Seriously. - J]

Besides being vile and stupid, however, the editorial was beside the point. Investor's Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn't a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.

Let's talk about health care around the advanced world.

Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. There are, however, wide variations in the specifics, with three main approaches taken.

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care while spending only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.

The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills. That's how Canada and, in a more complex fashion, France do it. It's also a system familiar to most Americans, since even those of us not yet on Medicare have parents and relatives who are.

Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about such systems, most of them false. French health care is excellent. Canadians with chronic conditions are more satisfied with their system than their U.S. counterparts. And Medicare is highly popular, as evidenced by the tendency of town-hall protesters to demand that the government keep its hands off the program.

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can't discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some "Swiss" aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.

So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it's a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.

If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn't have chosen this route. True "socialized medicine" would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That's why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort.

But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work.

So we can do this. At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.

Euro Area already out of recession

Thank God we don't live in Euro-socialist backwaters like Germany or France, because then we'd be out of our recession by now and back to our profligate ways, instead of belatedly learning to live within our means, pulling up our bootstraps, or trying to start an exciting new career outside the banking, automotive, manufacturing, retail, or construction sectors.

They'll be sorry their pain was so short-lived when they see how much character we've gained from this learning experience!

Euro-Area Economy Contracted 0.1% in 2nd Quarter

By Simon Meier

August 13, 2009 | Bloomberg.com

URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=adV23zP9jjtU

Re: Those Arrogant Americans

It's too bad James Lewis didn't finish the quote from Obama's Strasbourg speech, following "...derisive":

"But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious.  Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad.  On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common.  They are not wise.  They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated.  They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America."

In total, I call that a fair & balanced, and yes, hopeful, assessment.  It threw Europeans a rhetorical bone, but also gave them some criticism to chew on.  That's quintessential diplomacy.

I couldn't be more pleased.

As for selective quotation of our president, and virulent francophobia, I expect nothing less of Realclearpolitics.

P.S. -- The "we saved your ass back in WWII" argument isn't going to work forever, if it hasn't stopped working already.  Just like our gratitude to the French for saving our asses during the American Revolution long ago passed its expiration date.

P.P.S. -- To say that America liberated E. Europe is way too simplistic and self-serving, and completely disregards the risks,  sacrifices and achievements of the people living in those countries, for example the Solidarity movement in Poland, Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the UPA separatist army in Ukraine, and thousands of brave dissidents like Vasyl Stus who stood up to an evil regime and paid the ultimate price, but whose example lived on.  In a word, Lewis's statement is wrong, and yes, comes off as completely ignorant and arrogant. We should be thanking them for freeing themselves and making the world a more open, peaceful, prosperous and democratic place for us all to live in.

"In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

 

-- President Barack Obama, April 3, 2009

 

Those Arrogant Americans

By James Lewis

April 6, 2009  | RealClearPolitics.com

 

We have a rock star president who for the first time in American history fired the President of a private corporation, General Motors, then immediately flew to Europe with an entourage of 500 courtiers and a worshipful media, bowed waist-deep to the King of Saudi Arabia, and proceeded to accuse his own country of arrogance.

 

In France, of all places.

 

Does anybody else think this guy is shockingly ignorant?  I wonder if he has every really talked to a concentration camp survivor, or a Cuban refugee, or a boat person from Vietnam?  Or a Soviet dissident.  Or a survivor or Mao's purges.

 

Not to mention families with fallen American soldiers in the graveyards.  Yes, he's going to Normandie, but will he apologize for our arrogance there, too?  Does he really understand anything beyond the PC history of the world?  Or will he just lie in his photo op at the American Cemetery at Normandie?

 

Ahhh, those arrogant Americans.  First they rebel against King George III and all the crowned heads of Europe.  Then they welcome tens of millions of poor and persecuted people from the Old World.  Then they fail to bow down to Europe's greatest figures -- from Napoleon and Otto von Bismarck to the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin.  Then they fight a civil war, losing half a million people to liberate black people in America.  Then they diss the man the BBC considers to be the greatest philosopher ever, one Karl Marx, whose followers killed 100 million innocents in the 20th century.  And then, to topit all off, they liberate both the Western half of Europe (in 1946) and the Eastern half (in 1989).

 

What arrogance these Americans have.  Either that, or a very, very -- no, stunningly -- ignorant man was just elected president. What kind of man has such an obsessive need to put down his own country?  Especially given our real history?  Has he ever read an honest history book?