Friday, September 10, 2010

Why give him so much publicity?

As of writing this Mister Crazy Minister has backed down from the burning. Maybe it was just a publicity stunt. Maybe he recognized that someone was bound to kill him for it, possibly even a Christian, just to shut him up.

He got a whole lot of undeserved publicity. But I think that was a necessary evil.

Did the media and politicians blow up the story? Yes. Should they have been quieter? Hell no.

If they had been silent, then in a week Al Jazeera would have a clip showing and then we'd have a shitstorm. Why did no one try to stop this? Why has no one condemned this? This would have gotten out somehow, so what matters is that it gets out on our terms.

What are our terms?

Our terms are "Look at this terrible thing which we all condemn and would not do ourselves. This is a fringe person who gains no respect here. We are not like him."

Of course we'd say the same thing even if the clip was 'leaked' rather than broadcast constantly. But it's a much different thing to condemn the minister before he does it and before there's been a huge backlash than to appear to be patching things up afterward.

2 comments:

Gronthe said...

And yet, if he ends up burning it and gets "offed" by some psycho (christian or radical muslim) then his church followers will only be confirmed in their belief that Jim-Bob-Jo-Book-Burner really is Jesus. Then they all commit suicide.

Klepsacovic said...

I suppose that could with a sufficiently broad category of "they".