What a Waleed! With an Aly like this guy who needs enemies

OUR intellectual superiors have raised the alarm. Worried by how all of us terrible oiks are responding to murderous Islamic terrorism, they’ve declared there should be limits to what we say.

OUR intellectual superiors have raised the alarm. Worried by how all of us terrible oiks are responding to murderous Islamic terrorism, they’ve declared there should be limits to what we say about murderous Islamic terrorism.

Following what co-host Waleed Aly described as “one of the heaviest weeks we’ve lived through in a long time”, the ABC’s Minefield radio program last Thursday “took a hard look at the negative effects of ‘free speech’.” Waleed’s co-presenter Scott Stephens, editor of the ABC’s Religion and Ethics website, kicked things off:

“There’s something quite disturbing about our response to the events we’ve witnessed in places like Orlando or Nice. I’m hearing things being said that not that long ago would’ve been unthinkable.”

Heavy week... Waleed Aly.

Now, a normal person might choose to focus on the events themselves, which left a total of 133 people dead through the vile deeds of Islamic maniacs. Their thinking might go something this: “There’s something quite disturbing about the events we’ve witnessed in places like Orlando or Nice. I’m seeing things that not long ago would’ve been unthinkable.”

By contrast, not a solitary person has been killed by the response to those murders.

Stephens broadened his concern to include speeches made at last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland from the parents of children killed by illegal immigrants. “The whole point of it was to demonise a particular group,” Stephens claimed.

“The whole point of it is to do a certain violence against the dignity of fellow citizens and fellow human beings.”

As opposed, I guess, to the actual deadly violence committed by terrorists and illegals, which appear for Stephens to rank below the horrifying use of words. “We’ve been hearing about calls for a ban on Muslim immigration,” he fretted, referring to television presenter Sonia Kruger’s recent remarks.

“In the national broadsheet this week there was a letter published calling for Muslim internment. There have been expressions of unvarnished racism and sexism. We’ve seen over the last year chest-beating advocacy of the restoration of torture.”

84 dead.....The atrocity in Nice.

Sounds like the advocates are torturing themselves. It’s notoriously difficult to waterboard someone when you’re pounding away on your own ribcage.

Stephens offered this thundering conclusion:

“I’m wondering whether we as moral agents can still be trusted with the privilege of freedom of speech. I think we’re at the point where we have to re-examine what we mean by that and if there is a deeper moral obligation that puts constraints on what we ought to be able to say in public..”

It might have been fun to turn Stephens’s microphone off mid-rant. No more freedom of speech for you, mate, especially not on the taxpayer’s dime.

Waleed Aly went along with most of this, so long as Stephens confined his comments “to the moral realm”, wherever that is. Perhaps it should be Radio National’s new name.

Listeners then heard from Aly himself. “Certain speech and the proliferation of certain speech can have real world harms,” the Gold Logie winner said. “It’s part of whipping up a mood that has seen people bashed and may well see more people bashed.”

49 dead... FBI outside the Pulse Nightclub.

In fact, certain speech and the proliferation of certain speech can cause real world deaths. Much of that speech comes from the Koran, which has been whipping up quite a mood of late in Syria and northern Iraq.

We’ve also seen a little Koran-inspired mood whipping locally. Recall the violent Sydney riot of 2012, where signs reading “behead all those who insult the prophet” were prominent.

One year after that riot, and immediately following the Boston Marathon bombing – which he absurdly suggested may have been committed by “self-styled American patriots” – Aly wrote: “Terrorism is a perpetual irritant, and that while it is tragic and emotionally lacerating, it kills relatively few people and is not any kind of existential threat.”

The victims in Orlando and Nice might disagree. Too bad their freedom of speech has been permanently revoked.

Still, maybe Stephens and Aly have a point. Some speech is “toxic and toxifying”, to use Stephens’s phrase. Take this chunk of strange Aly-speak from last week’s show: “When I have a private conversation, even with my wife, I’m performing to her … I’m putting a certain personality forward and I’m regulating my behaviour in expectation of what she would expect …

“But I don’t regard that as performance because I know the sum totality of that audience and I have an ongoing relationship with that audience that expands the capacity for authenticity.”

Limiting free speech is going too far, but we can probably all agree on banning Waleed Aly from ever writing anybody’s wedding vows. Talk about whipping up a mood.

HEY KIDS, LET’S HAVE SILENT CHEERING FOR STUPID DECISIONS

PARENTS of children at Sydney’s Elanora Heights Public lately learned of a big change at the school. “If you’ve been to a school assembly recently, you may have noticed our students doing silent cheers,” the school newsletter said.

“Instead of clapping, the students are free to punch the air, pull excited faces and wriggle about on the spot. This practice has been adopted to respect members of our school community who are sensitive to noise.”

Bad luck if you’re sensitive to ridiculous facial expressions, suffer wrigglephobia or get in the way of a misdirected air punch.

In fact, bad luck if you’re simply sensitive to stupid decisions by school officials.

“When you attend an assembly, teachers will prompt the audience to conduct a silent cheer if it is needed,” the newsletter continued. How the teachers do this is not revealed. Clapping might work.

“Teachers have also found the silent cheers to be a great way to expend children’s energy and reduce fidgeting.”

Fidgeting is out. Wriggling is in. Following all the changes to body- movement regulations at Elanora Heights Public must be a fulltime occupation. Is there any judgment on when a fidget becomes a wriggle? Is it possible to both fidget and wriggle at the same time?

These vexing questions consume the thoughts of the children, who before they even graduate from primary school will have developed an appreciation for legal complexity that would shame Clarence Darrow.

Normal kids chase Pokemon. These kids, by comparison, are hunting down precise definitions about musculoskeletal biomechanics.

But the best part of the newsletter was in its headline, which read: “Did you know that our school has adopted silent cheers at assembly’s?”

That’s modern education for you. They’ll change an entire school’s method of expressing appreciation in case it frightens some hypersensitive “members of our school community” — but they don’t know the correct plural form of a word they use during every single school day.