Salman Rushdie, 2014 photo
Salman Rushdie:
“I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty, and stupidity.
“Respect for religion has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’
“Religions like all other ideas deserve criticism, satire and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”
(Editor’s note: Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian author who wrote Satanic Verses, a novel, in 1989. As a result of that, the Iran Ayatollah issued a fatwa on him. He had to go into hiding for years. He has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and currently teaches at a major American University. He is a courageous man.)
As a blogger, I feel strongly about freedom of the press/speech and the need for democracies to defend that idea. Blogfinger has had a few individuals in Ocean Grove go out of their way to actively try to diminish what I am doing, but their small and intolerant voices have only encouraged me to stay the course and to hopefully encourage you Blogarians to keep participating in our experiment in hyperlocal reporting. You may, at times, not like what I do, but it benefits everyone if you support the process.
CRAIG OGDEN “Cavatina” from the soundtrack of Deer Hunter, a film about men going to war to fight for freedom in Vietnam.
Both my brother and my father served in the war. I have visited the Vietnam memorial wall following his death. I can so relate to both of the above comments. Also am touched by how father and son communicate w/respect when there is a difference. This is something I rarely observed in my own family.
Stephen: I think that most American soldiers who go to war, since the Revolutionary War, have believed, at least initially, that they were going to fight for freedom. Of course, in the Vietnam era, many of them and many of the American public, later changed their minds.
But have you ever visited the Vietnam Memorial in DC? If you did, you will understand that it is necessary to be generous,for the sake of their memories and for their families, regarding their bravery, loyalty and service to our country, and that is also why I said that they went to fight for freedom, because the word “freedom” is broadly used together with the word “America.”
Everything that you said about The Deer Hunter movie is true and well stated, but our post is about Salman Rushdie’s (and my) views on freedom of speech and the press. My one sentence that you latched on to was not intended to be a movie review. Mostly I chose the music because it is very beautiful and fits the mood of the terrible news in France. Dad
Actually, Deer Hunter is in fact not about men going to Vietnam to fight for freedom. It about men going to Vietnam who then essentially lose their freedom…their freedom to feel truly alive and whole ever again, in addition to the loss of their sanity after being deceived and dragooned into an unjust war for an unjust cause which slaughtered millions of innocent Vietnamese people. The title of the film and the theme are epitomized at the end of the film when the character played by Robert Dinero tries to go deer hunting again after the war. However, he can no longer kill the deer (ie symbol for the innocent) and thus the morality tale of war’s essential inhumanity and barbarism regardless of the ostensible political exigencies is signed, sealed and delivered to the viewer. I feel that if you are going to reference art for its thematic relevance, one should be accurate about its theme.
Reblogged this on shensea and commented:
On the cold day in January my heart is with Paris, France and the heartaches it carries this dark night