Sobre el respeto

Parece que Neil Gaiman (quien por cierto cada año se ve más guapo) y yo estuvimos leyendo lo mismo; fueron exactamente los mismos dos párrafos de la entrevista a Salman Rushdie en The Guardian los que llamaron nuestra atención:

Does he agree there should be discrimination against Muslims? “I don’t think there should be discrimination against anyone. Nor do I think Martin was advocating that. The point is this: I don’t have to agree with what you or anybody says to defend their right to say it. To have Martin articulating a public fear in this rather knockabout way was justified. If we don’t say what we think or articulate what is being generally thought, then we are self-censoring, which is wimpish.

“I thought the attack on Martin in the Guardian by Ronan Bennett [in an article published last November and condemned by McEwan] was out of order. To say he is racist because of that is wrong. I may not like the things you believe and, by the way, the fact that you believe them makes me think less of you as a person. I may despise you personally for what you believe, but I should be able to say it. Everybody needs to get thicker skins. There is this culture of offence, as though offending someone is the worst thing anyone can do. Again, there is an assumption that our first duty is to be respectful. But what would a respectful cartoon look like? Really boring! You wouldn’t publish it. The nature of the form is irreverence and disrespect.

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A partir de la visita de Gaiman a Brasil, me enteré que a las historietas o a los ‘cómics’, en portugués se les dice ‘histórias em quadrinhos’.

Es una expresión tan dulce.

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Alberto Chimal anda buscando versos. Entérese aquí.