Last week I posted a story about Cat Stevens wishing Salman Rushdie dead in 1989 (here) which I considered essentially unequivocable, much the same opinion as Salman rushdie had by the way. However, it could be equivocated, and Detroit New’s writer Susan Whitall forwarded me a very thorough piece of equivocation from philly.com.Some choice quotes:
“Because of imaginary scenarios set by courthouse TV interviewers, in 1989 I was drawn into making stupid and offensive jokes about Rushdie on a program called Hypotheticals; however, they were meant to lighten the moment and raise a smile – as good ol’ British sense of humor occasionally is known to do – unfortunately for me . . . it didn’t.
“In 1989, during the heat and height of the Satanic Verses controversy, I was silly enough to accept appearing on . . . Hypotheticals, which posed imaginary scenarios by a well-versed (what if . . . ?) barrister, Geoffrey Robertson. . . . I foolishly made light of certain provocative questions. When asked what I’d do if Salman Rushdie entered a restaurant in which I was eating, I said, ‘I would probably call up Ayatollah Khomeini’; and, rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author, I jokingly said I would have preferred that it’d be the ‘real thing.’
“Criticize me for my bad taste, in hindsight, I agree. But these comments were part of a well-known British national trait; a touch of dry humor on my part.”
As for the show itself? from wikipedia: “Since 1981, often with long intervals in between, Robertson has hosted an Australian television series of programmes called Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals. These shows invite notable people, often including former and current political leaders, to discuss contemporary issues by assuming imagined identities in hypothetical situations.”
Sounds fair enough to me.., though when people joke they usually laugh.
