Episode 128: The Salman Rushdie Attack Holds a Mirror To The West And The Opera Finally Bans Slavery
Blocked and Reported
Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2022
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, has spent decades in hiding as radical Muslims have hunted and killed many others involved with the controversial novel. Recently, he reemerged in New York, only to be stabbed near-fatally as he took the stage. But are others wrong to draw parallels between the rhetoric used by his attackers and the rhetoric we see increasingly in the West?
Plus, Substack writer Sam Thielman had his contract unfairly terminated, but Jesse uncovers events in his past that suggest he may not be quite as fair to others. Then, enjoy the chaos as internet insanity bleeds over into the opera scene once again, this time with an abolitionist twist.
Salman Rushdie
The attack on Rushdie
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/us/salman-rushdie-attack-monday/index.html
Bari Weiss’s history of the fatwa against him
Jesse’s review of Helen Joyce’s book
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/books/review/trans-helen-joyce.html
The MacLachlan assault
The outcome of the case
The Julie Bindel case
Sam Thielman
Ackerman’s post mildly criticizing Substack (note Thielman credit)
https://foreverwars.ghost.io/forever-wars-off-substack-on-ghost/
Thielman details how Substack punished him for editing the post
https://foreverwars.ghost.io/substack-retaliates-against-forever-wars-editor/
Substack backpedals
Our episode on the Gist controversy
Pesca’s suspension
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/media/slate-mike-pesca-suspended.html
Thielman isn’t happy how things turned out
Jesse’s response
Thielman digs himself deeper re: Donald MacNeil Jr.
Sam’s devastating response, a masterpiece of polemics thoroughly discrediting Jesse and dishonoring his descendants for centuries to come
Theater Blowup
Playwrights Ensemble resigns collectively
A list of demands for white american theater, invoking, of all things, the 13th Amendment
https://www.weseeyouwat.com/
The results of the protest outside the theater
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/theater/ken-matt-martin-victory-gardens.html
The internal conflict at Victory Gardens
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/theater/victory-gardens-theater-chicago.html?smtyp=cur
Ken-Matt’s statement
http://www.kenmatt.com/blog/2022/7/18/for-those-doing-the-work
Image: People listen as writers gather to read selected works of British author Salman Rushdie, one week after he was stabbed while on stage, during a rally to show solidarity for free expression outside the New York Public Library in New York City on August 19, 2022. - Hadi Matar has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges after being accused of stabbing British author Salman Rushdie multiple times on stage during a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution. The severely injured author is recovering well according to family and friends, after the assault left him with multiple stab wounds on August 12, 2022. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to do it. |
| 0:07.0 | Katie, her is on. |
| 0:10.6 | What's up? |
| 0:11.6 | Jessie, there's some big news in my life. |
| 0:13.8 | Pregurs? |
| 0:14.8 | That's physically impossible. |
| 0:16.3 | No, I made a friend. |
| 0:18.2 | That seems about as likely as you being pregnant. |
| 0:20.2 | I know. |
| 0:21.2 | It's actually almost as unlikely. |
| 0:22.2 | No, I made an actual friend and I went to my new friends for dinner the other night and |
| 0:27.7 | she told me a little story that I'd like to tell you. |
| 0:29.8 | Please, go ahead. |
| 0:30.8 | Okay, so she lives close to Bamber, Jarlind, which is this very, it's very, it's not |
| 0:36.8 | like, she, she, but it's what, it's like Seattle and even where people here drive subruses. |
| 0:41.8 | But it's a very upper class, like the governor lives there. |
| 0:45.0 | So, it's a lot of people who are like wearing LLB and R.E.I., but they're actually millionaires |
| 0:49.5 | and sometimes billionaires. |
| 0:51.2 | And it's very beautiful. |
| 0:52.2 | It's a nice place to live. |
| 0:53.2 | Very white, very, you know, you can sort of picture it, right? |
| 0:56.7 | You're picking up and I'm putting it down. |
... |
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