Dear David Brooks: A Beheading Is a Beheading Is a Beheading

[madokie]

Here's an actual paragraph from an actual writer for the actual New York Times: "But the revulsion aroused by beheading is mostly a moral revulsion. A beheading feels like a defilement. It’s not just an injury or a crime. It is an indignity. A beheading is more like rape, castration or cannibalism. It is a defacement of something sacred that should be inviolable."

Yes, that's right. In his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "Dingleberries of pop psychology plopped in a conservative crapper&quot , David Brooks spends a good bit of time exploring why the beheading of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State is so shocking. Now, you might say, "Umm, because they cut their fuckin' heads off?" But fuck you, you fucking plebe; you have not read books and David Brooks has. And those books say things have meaning so meaning he shall show you.

"But what is this sacred thing that is being violated?" he ponders ponderously before answering anally (now there's some assonance - boo-yah!), "Well, the human body is sacred. Most of us understand, even if we don’t think about it, or have a vocabulary to talk about it these days, that the human body is not just a piece of meat or a bunch of neurons and cells. The human body has a different moral status than a cow’s body or a piece of broccoli."

You may read that and, like the Rude Pundit, think, "Who are you arguing with, Davy? Where is this person who believes that humans and broccoli compare favorably? We eat broccoli. Does this have something to do with the cannibalism?" And, by the way, "Well, the human body is sacred" has to be the least impressive way of stating something that has seemingly mystical meaning. He may as well have written, "Dude, the body is like...yeah." Actually, that's deeper because it implies that some things cannot be understood.

- See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/#sthash.P6F0PXbX.dpuf

[merrily]

1. David Brooks is repulsive and unprincipled.

If Republicans ran on a platform of eating people, he'd find a way to defend it.

As I learned recently by watching a PBS program about the Tower of London, beheading cleanly is harder than we might assume. A novice is likely to bungle it. Then again, even lethal injection is being bungled in the US.

The issue here is the killing of people, if you share my views, or the killing of innocent people, if you are less opposed to the death penalty than I am.

Shooting journalists simply because they came into an area where you could kidnap them easily and you hate their country's policies is not any nobler than a clean beheading.

[intaglio]

2. I bet David Brooks has no objection to the Saudis continuing beheading

19 in August this year alone.
Saudi Arabia executes 19 in one half of August in 'disturbing surge of beheadings'