Thursday, July 12, 2007

Sir Salman

David Blunkett was on SKY News this morning and made two observations:

- Threatening violence just because someone has received an award is "quite outrageous"
- Salman Rushdie DID NOT deserve his knighthood on merit grounds.

This mirrors my own views on the matter. Additionally, a knighthood is a more explicitly political award than the usual merit-based gongs. So you would think that those who dish them out would have a keen sense of the political consequences, such as the impact on our national interest. You'd think...

Meanwhile German writer Günter Wallraff is chasing a Darwin award with his plan to read The Satanic Verses out loud in Cologne's new mosque. He thinks it will provide a "litmus test" of the Turkish-Muslim community's desire for dialog:

"If this reading takes place, and I am doing my best to see that it does, it will surely have an extremely liberating effect. Just imagine the scene in the mosque: The reading takes place, some find what they hear to be not bad at all, and some even laugh. That would open a lot of doors."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And then his head falls off.