Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

After being forced underground for ten years at a cost of £1 million a year, the price of bodyguards in Merry Old England, Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses -- which got him a fatwah from the Ayatollah Khomeini – has lost none of his fizz. "Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family,” Rushdie said during a recent interview , “there's not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted wearing the veil. "I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on [Leader of Britian’s House of Commons Jack Straw's] side.” And here’s the fizz: “He [Straw] was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women." Although the fatwah against Rushdie presumably has been removed, opinions of this kind are not likely to earn the ...