1. If you only read one editorial about what went down in Paris on Wednesday at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie HEBDO, make it this one by George Packer.
The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West - the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists. ... Because the ideology is the product of a major world religion, a lot of painstaking pretzel logic goes into trying to explain what the violence does, or doesn’t, have to do with Islam.
Read the whole thing. Read it. Especially if you secretly harbor niggling doubts about whether the people who work at Charlie HEBDO might have been "asking for it". Read it now.
2. If you don't know who David Cole is, how he figures into the story of Hollywood's underground right-wing establishment, and what he did before he got into the business of being America's #1 Republican Party Animal - I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "Folocaust denier" - then boy howdy, wait'll you get a load of this crazy excerpt from his upcoming book by our good friends at Feral House Publishing!
3. And as a fitting satirical finish to today's otherwise tragic selections, please join me in watching [adult swim]'s hilariously sacrilegious parody infomercial, The Book of Christ.
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