Monday, December 25, 2006

"The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill." - Peter Ustinov

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Christianity and Islam are the 2 religions which most often make the news with adherents protesting against blasphemy. The irony is that both religions feature founders who were persecuted for *their* blasphemy, but who were later vindicated by history (or rather by demographics) and have thus become the standard against which it is now blasphemous to deviate from. Viz., the events leading up to the Hijra.

For example, The Last Temptation of Christ was lambasted and Molotov Cocktail-ed when it first came out, but is now accepted by some as making a valid theological point:

"In his defense of the movie, noted critic Roger Ebert writes that Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader

"paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously, and they have made a film that does not turn him into a garish, emasculated image from a religious postcard. Here he is flesh and blood, struggling, questioning, asking himself and his father which is the right way, and finally, after great suffering, earning the right to say, on the cross, 'It is accomplished.'""


The persecuted have become the persecutors, but then this is how like groups that complain about the lack of freedom of speech then try to censor others' freedom once they come into power. Ditto for totalitarian laws and revolutionaries.
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