Man, this is all going to look great in the history books. I suppose there’s one way you could look at this and say that those who are brave enough to stand up to Islam are being persecuted.

He said his bank recently demanded immediate repayment of the $140,000 balance on the church mortgage; that his property insurance had been canceled since he announced in late July that he intended to burn copies of the Koran; and that death threats now come in regularly.

“We have to be careful,” he said. He tapped a holster on the right hip of his jean shorts; it held a .40-caliber pistol, which he said he was licensed to carry.

But you’d have to be really high.

I laughed! But the last laugh is on me. This IM conversation took place yesterday afternoon. In it, we wondered: which politician would be the first to suggest that the crazy (alleged!) stabbing of a New York City cab driver because he is a Muslim would be proof that the “Ground Zero Terror Mosque” should be moved? As a gambling man, I always like the long shot. But I went too long. My fine coworker, Mr. Alex Balk, always has his eye on the prize, and so he correctly guessed that the governor of New York State would be the first to try to explain that, yes, of course Muslims will be stabbed if we build a cultural center devoted to understanding and tolerance in lower Manhattan. I regret my error, but I regret David Paterson a whole lot more.

by Mike Barthel

We were watching the Paris Hilton episode of “South Park” the other night, in which the Paris character repeatedly coughs up semen and causes her dog to shoot itself. (She also dresses Butters in a bear costume, but never mind.) I remember it being funny and righteous at the time-2004-or at least not all that different from other things going on in the media. The episode is entitled “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset,” and that about summed up the national mood.

Watching it today, though, it looked… well, it looked kind of mean.

I know, I know: why in the world should we have any sympathy for Paris Hilton? After all, she seemed to come through it fine, and is still just being Paris. Thing is, though, at the time all of this hit, she was a 22-year-old girl going out and getting drunk and doing drugs and sleeping around-which, unless you are lame, is exactly what you were doing when you were 22. The problem with Paris wasn’t Paris, it was the amount of attention the media paid to Paris. (Assuming you think Paris Hilton is a less worthy subject of attention than a Hollywood starlet, which seems questionable to me, but again, never mind.) And whether or not she encouraged the attention, the simple fact is that if you had a problem with the media, the target of your complaints should be the media.

But that’s not what we did. As in the “South Park” episode, the person we complained about was Paris. Now, I wouldn’t particularly want to be friends with Paris, and I am certainly a little peeved that she became this weird monkey’s paw of fame who, by simple friendship, could ruin the lives of singers and actors who might have otherwise made it out OK. But, again, neither her behavior nor her existence were particularly abnormal: licentious youth and trust-fund kids have had a robust presence in American society for some time. So why did we all feel OK saying just these incredibly awful, mean things about her? The whole discourse around Paris took on a real Christians-in-the-Colosseum feel. But shit, who cares?

Well, we did. The thing about Paris Hilton is that she embodied a lot of the important social issues of the 00s, like the glorification of affluence, celebrity culture as entertainment and the direction of feminism. Talking about her was a way of talking about these things without having to feel like we were having a real, serious discussion-something that, in America, we avoid at all costs. Pop culture is great for having these proxy wars because it provides a stable, common object of analysis, something we all know about that can serve as a jumping-off point for debates about shared values.

The problem is that when it’s a real person, these debates have implications for other real people. The message sent by scarlet-lettering a real person’s real actions as an affront to our collective values was that engaging in behaviors which the more liberal amongst us would describe as “having fun” was something you should (still!) be ashamed of. Sure, go ahead and do it-after all, the consumer economy relies on young people “going crazy” in this way-but for God’s sake, be quiet about it.

The message of the “South Park” episode was that girls shouldn’t use sluttiness (though note the word “whore” in the episode’s title) as a way of getting ahead. But that’s not what Paris did. She got ahead just by being born. As part of a general trend of glorifying marriage-based paths to success-see also “My Super Sweet 16” and most of the “Real Housewives”-Paris served as a legitimate focal point of debate.

But that’s not really what people had a problem with. It was the things Paris did to have fun, like sleeping around and getting wasted. Certainly these are not always good activities, but they’re not inherently bad either. I thought we had all agreed on that!

Ultimately, I’m not asking for anyone to have sympathy for Paris Hilton. It’s more that I’m reminding myself, I suppose, to keep this in mind the next time a moral panic hits. Think of the children! Elaborate condemnation of the stupid and privileged feels good, I know. But there’s always collateral damage. There are lots of awful people in the world, and while I endorse the entertainment value of following their lives, maybe let’s save the public flagellation for people who are actively causing other people harm. Lord knows there’s no shortage of them.

Mike Barthel has written about pop music for a bunch of places, mostly Idolator and Flagpole, and is currently doing so for the Portland Mercury and Color magazine. He continues to have a Tumblr and be a grad student in Seattle.

Remember last summer, way back in the very first Difficult Listening Hour, when we told you about Vijay Iyer’s jazz trio cover of MIA’s “Galang”? Well, now that version has been mashed up with M.I.A.’s original, and the results are pretty outstanding.

“Arne May’s team at the University of Hamburg, Germany, applied heat to the arms of 38 volunteers over six days. Half of them were told the heat would get more intense, and they reported constant pain levels. The rest felt less pain as they got used to the sensation. The first group also had increased activity in a brain area involved in pain perception.” So reports New Scientist’s Jessica Hamzelou about an interesting phenomenon with an excellent name that I didn’t know existed: the “nocebo effect,” which, just like it sounds, “describes any case where putting someone in a negative frame of mind has an adverse effect on their health or well-being.” Up until today, I would have thought the nocebo effect was California police code for silencing gangsta rap through parole stipulations that violate First Amendment rights.

And since it’s August:

Oh, and:

I really don’t know yet what to think about Inside Job, the forthcoming documentary about Wall Street and the financial crisis. (The most recent one, I mean!) The trailer sort of reads like a cross between Michael Moore and one of those 9/11 Truther movies. But a trailer is designed to get people to a movie and, that being said, Singapore and Iceland are well-represented in the film, which speaks of good things. Also the movie’s press kit has a timeline of deregulation in the U.S., so at least it promises to be somewhat fact-based!

“The result is a vicious circle in which Israel feels that its existential fears are not taken seriously. Israel’s electorate moves towards leaders who address but also keep reinforcing its fears. International opinion becomes ever more negative, which in turn reinforces Israel’s isolation which in turn raises existential fears. This has one, very unfortunate, consequence. Israel’s best chance of minimizing the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah and minimizing Iranian influence in the Middle East is to engage with the Arab League peace initiative. If Israel were to normalize relations with all of the Arab and most of the Islamic world, particularly Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas would be isolated to the point of having to move towards abandoning violence and recognizing Israel’s legitimacy. Taking this road requires Israel to take a risk and bet on the positive dynamics of a peace process. But this is precisely what Israel is incapable of doing after the traumas of the second intifada and the shelling of southern Israel. Israelis at this point prefer international isolation, painful as it is, to reliance on Arab peace partners for its own security.”
-Haaretz’s Carlo Strenger writes about Israel’s shift to the right.

Doesn’t anybody just fuck in cars anymore? “Officers found Hamilton to have her pants unbuttoned with a female sex toy in her lap. She told officers she had been using the toy while driving, as well as watching a video on a computer her passenger was holding. It is not clear what the nature of that video was.”

It’s a new form of poetry so easy anyone can do it. Awl pal Jim Behrle shows you how, here.

It’s a lesson I have had to learn the hard way myself. If you have to explain your coinage parenthetically, then your coinage just isn’t working. So while maybe I will follow every person on this Inspiring Black Women of Twitter list (but not Terry McMillan, because, no), I will definitely not accept @aisha1908 being described as a member of the growing ranks of “twactivists (twitter activists).”