Jon Stewart Criticized By Salman Rushdie

The Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert "Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear" was a spectacular success. Crowd estimates suggest roughly 200,000 people. And unlike the Glenn Beck rally of fear-mongering and hate, Stewart and Colbert a preached a message of compromise and working together in politics just as Americans work together everyday in our lives everywhere except in Washington.

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Stewart illustrated this point quite vividly with an image of the traffic moving into the Holland Tunnel: one car after another 'You go then I go' all different Americans from different walks of life and different beliefs and yet spontaneously we manage to move forward together. We should courtesy and let strangers go before us. We all move together. We can and do this all the time. Why not in politics? That should be a superfluous statement to make, but it isn't. Which makes it poetically and politically stunning in its simplicity and recipe for progress.

And the rally, unlike the White-a-thon of Beck, represented the diverse of America: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Catholics and everyone else.

But Stewart has come under some criticism. I am not speaking about the negative reviews he got (naturally) in the media (naturally because Stewart lampooned them). But a matter revolving around the rally's hosting of Cat Stevens:

Salman Rushdie has personally complained to Jon Stewart for hosting on the stage Islamic convert Cat Stevens or Yusuf Islam, because Islam allegedly endorsed Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie's life for writing a seemingly offensive book against the Islamic Prophet Mohammed. "Salmon Rushdie, or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again," Stevens said then.

Although he has never directly apologized for his comment he has since, a few years back, offered a clarification:

"I was a sitting target, in a way, for anybody who wanted to make some kind of headline. I certainly never supported the Fatwa, but when I was asked about ... the actual principle of blasphemy and capital punishment, well, like the Bible, I said, '"You know, yeah, it's there, it's in the Koran.' And I couldn't deny that."

Rushdie spoken to Stewart, but has been disappointed: "I spoke to Jon Stewart about Yusuf Islam’s appearance. He said he was sorry it upset me, but really, it was plain that he was fine with it. Depressing."

I do not know if Stevens is a fundamentalist and that statement regarding Rushdie could have been said in angry haste and dismissive and not meant literally or with a fiery animus. It is an expression. Like saying "I'd rather die than do that" or "Go jump a bridge". It is an expression and Stevens could not have been series. But I did read from an authoritative source that Stevens is an Islamic fundamentalist, but who knows?

But, anyway, it is really obnoxious that Rushdie would seek to get some attention out of this. Not everyone has to respond to his sensibilities and ego. It's just silly. The whole thing happened years, nay decades, ago and all he is clinging to is an off-hand comment that Stevens made and since then Stevens has never said anything else, encouraged anything and, of course, never acted on that statement. Rushdie needs to let it go and chill. And he needs to get over himself. Who does he think he is going around demanding that Stewart condemn Stevens all because of Rushdie's bruised ego? It does not matter. Should Stevens be ostracized because of one heated comment? Rushdie is thin skinned, petty and simply grandiose in thinking if he thinks deference is due to his narcissistic beliefs. This is about publicity and ego and Rushdie should really just fatwa the whole thing.