Expectedly the Muslim right-wing is inflamed and raised a stir yet again...a Pakistani minister said the knighthood could spark attacks.. Iran condemned the award and raised a diplomatic protest with Britain....the British government stood by the award, a British MP found it 'gratuitously offensive' ...the literary world applauded... people debated and opined on the subject, others wondered why he was knighted, while still others thought it was undeserved (for example, noted journalist Craig Murray opined: "Rushdie's prose has all the cutting edge of a damp cloth") and some stooped to name-calling (Sir Salman Humbug.)
I agree that his novels since the fatwa have been damp squibs...without any of the sizzle and amazingly fun word-play of the earlier novels. I also agree with what Craig Murray writes later in the article: " If Salman Rushdie has an interest in life other than Salman Rushdie, it is not readily discernible."
Rushdie has indeed seemingly become too much about himself, his beautiful wife (they are divorcing it is now confirmed - though that has nothing to do with any of this), and has moved from being an author to a self-appointed guru on the geo-politics of the post 9-11 world. Trite, boring, unconvincing, and hardly entertaining.
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So is the newly knighted Salman Rushdie a “dangerous opportunist,” guilty of “elitism” and “insensitivity”? That’s what a few prominent writers said back in 1989.....writes Rachel Donadio in the New York Times, writing about ...
...the strain evident in the British response (in 1989): disdain for an immigrant arriviste who is unapologetic about his ambitions and who criticizes the British government rather than, say, expressing gratitude, as if that were the essential role of the artist.---
Also, all the hue and cry has been about Rushdie and we never heard of this lady, which the name suggests is also of Indian roots.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, has been awarded the CBE.
The 38-year-old says she regarded the award as an invitation to keep fighting for civil liberties. A barrister, she worked as a Home Office lawyer for five years, giving her a unique insight into targeting the government where it hurts. Ms Chakrabarti, is a constant critic of what she describes as the government's constant erosion of personal freedoms.
More power to her! (We need the Shami Chakrabarti's of the world to be the inspiring leaders of this world...not the Rushdies... we need the real issues of the day to be leading the news, not Paris Hilton!)---
Related: Queen's honor list for 2007 and A Guide to the Honours, which has been called "an absurd and undemocratic anachronism" and Rushdie's acceptance of the knighthood his derided as stirring "more pity than antipathy." The above link also refers to outrage expressed by the poet Benjamin Zephaniah a few years ago:
'OBE me? Up yours! I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality. Stick it, Mr Blair and Mrs Queen, stop going on about empire.’Nicely put. Others have also rejected these "honors" over the years (including an interesting rejection this year*) but no one has perhaps asked the Queen to stick it :)
* he rejects, she accepts
Joseph Corre, co-founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, rejected his MBE because he said he finds Prime Minister Tony Blair "morally corrupt". The firm's co-founder Serena Rees, who is his wife, has accepted her MBE.
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