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Showing posts from February 5, 2006

Nothing to laugh about in the Moslem world

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I finally got to see Albert Brook's Looking for Comedy in the Moslem World on Sunday just as the Moslem world was projecting its not-very-funny face in the form of violent demonstrations against those "offending" cartoons. I'm not a great fan of Brooks who is a B Grade Woody Allen and the movie is not very funny. But what really impressed me was the somewhat "conservative" message that came out of the film. Instead of trying to preach to us that "of all the casualties of globalism, religious sensibility is the most hurtful," like Simon Jenkins does in a column full of tiring multicultural slogans in the London Times , Brooks basically conveys to us a reality in which we have to accept that not all cultures are the same; that while we do share many universal traits -- we all laugh -- our concepts of what is funny (or tragic) might not be the same. It doesn't have to lead to a Clash of Civilizations. I've been very critical of this self-fulf