It's been a full week since my last entry. When I decided to resume blogging, I set a goal for myself to have at least two posts per any given week. And here I am, two weeks in, already falling short of my goal.
I do have a valid excuse, though. A day after my previous entry, something terrible happened. Paris, whose beauty more than justifies its Enlightenment name as the City of Light, was shrouded in darkness as the French capital became the target of yet another cowardly act of terrorism.
As someone who makes a living covering world news, I had no choice but to devote full attention to this event and its aftermath, which is still present on every single news outlet's front page as of today.
I was still able to hang out with friends and maintain some semblance of a social life, but mentally, I was worn out.
On the bright side, the event did give me something to touch on in this entry.
A day after our live coverage of the Paris massacre, my editor-in-chief sent a memo to the entire world news crew, asking us not to use any photos of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in our articles, citing some ambiguous political correctness reasons.
To be honest, I don't blame him for doing so. As the head of a non-government publication, he has every right to exert caution, preventing the newspaper from unnecessary backlash from the politically correct™, and unwanted attention from a dysfunctional Central Committee of Propaganda and Education, who would routinely look for the most trivial reasons to impose a fine.
Heck, even CNN, The New York Times, and a few other big-name outlets decided against posting pictures of Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
So my boss and those in charge at CNN chose not to show the cartoons to the public. That's fine. But what bothers me is the amount of "experts" who try to be politically correct™ and say something along the lines of "OK you can have freedom of speech, but..."
The main point of these "experts" is that while they support freedom of speech, they also find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons unnecessarily offensive. In other words, they question Charlie's decision to publish the cartoons.
I'm sorry, what?
That's basically the definition of an oxymoron if you ask me.
Here's something the "experts" may not know or just willfully neglect: pretty much every single thing that comes out of your mouth will "offend" a certain group of people. That's just how life works.
I am an atheist. Religion has absolutely zero meaning to me. This is the truth, but by saying that, I've offended a couple billion people who's religiously-affiliated.
But let's see it from my point of view. I spent 4 years in a Christian college, living with roommates and receiving an education from professors who hold Jesus Christ to the highest regard.
By these politically correct™ "experts"' logic, during those 4 years, should I take some degree of offense at the fact that every single person around me firmly believes, whether they publicly say that or not, that I am going to spend eternity in a pit of fire suffering torment for the "sins" I have committed until the end of days?
I'm no human behavior expert but I'm pretty sure that's not really a nice thing to say. So should I go around the college, collect all the Bibles and light them on fire to prove my point that I've been offended?
Probably not. And that's just one example. There's this one girl living across my dorm room in my senior year who legitimately tried to convert me to Christianity. When she finally gave up her effort a few days later, this was what she told me:
"Huy, you should really think about it. Either you're a Christian, or you're a faggot."
I'm sure she didn't mean it, she knew I was a goofy kind of guy who wouldn't get offended by stuff like this. But I had a valid reason to be offended, because you know, she's basically saying my entire family are faggots, joking or not.
Back to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, I'm sure every single Muslim is offended by the "blasphemous" illustration of their Prophet. But that doesn't give any of them the right to commit such a cowardly act.
Even worse, while the decision to not publish these cartoons will spare the likes of CNN some hate mails from their Muslim readers, it actually plays right into the hands of these radical terrorists. It creates something the media called "Islamophobia", or the fear of Islam, which is exactly what the Islamic State or al-Qaeda want, and exactly what the true Muslims dread.
I happened to spend 2 high school semesters sitting next to a friend who's Muslim. Although we don't see eye-to-eye on many things, I always see her as one of the nicest and most informed persons I've ever met. She probably sees me as nothing more than a goofy clown, though.
So it really saddens me to see her religion tainted in the eyes of the public just because of the action of the extremists and the media reactions that follow. And when the public mistakenly see Islam in its narrow radical version that's filled with violence, it puts her and the majority of Muslims in the world in a bad spot.
But rest assured, my friend, I will never see Islam in that light. We can agree to disagree when it comes to how we view religion, maintain our freedom of speech and freedom of religion (or lack thereof), while not succumbing to the oxymoronic world of the politically correct™.
I am Charlie.
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