A Brief Aside: Dutch Version

There's only one explanation, folks: the editors of this newspaper read my blog.

We get the NRC Handelsblad delivered daily. It's based out of Rotterdam and is one of the handful of national broadsheets in Holland. I like to look over the headlines, pick out words, and then try and figure out what the article is about ("Irak" and "CIA", for example--which usually is not a sign of a cheerful article).

Today I noticed a headline with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and then noticed something else: the article was referencing three columns from America: one in the LAT by Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris, one in the Washington Post by Anne Applebaum, and one in Slate by Christopher Hitchens. You may recognize these exact same articles as the ones mentioned in my post below.

I want royalty payments! (I'm going to ignore the inconvenient fact that my blog post was written well after the paper went to press).

Both the Rushdie/Harris and Applebaum columns were reprinted in full inside the paper. I'm not sure what else was written about the matter, because, well, it was all in Dutch. There doesn't seem to be a Dutch paper that also publishes in English (even online). I've signed up for a few daily summaries of the Dutch newspapers that get emailed to me in English, but they don't really substitute for the real thing.

At any rate, we had some lively discussion about the issue over supper. Hans likes Hirsi Ali, Lieselot doesn't.

One of the email summaries I receive printed a short editorial that basically said Holland should worry less about protecting Hirsi Ali and more about alleviating the discrimination faced by the Muslim population here. I don't really see how the two are mutually exclusive, unless you suppose the Muslim population is represented by the fanatics who murdered Theo Van Gogh.

Anyway, back to our regular programming.