More on the Danish cartoon controversy
Instapundit has a great round-up of links on the cartoon controversy. Photos of protest signs ("Behead those who insult Islam") and news on the burning of the Danish Embassy in Syria are included.
Apparently, the Boston Globe is almost as offended as the "Behead those who insult Islam" crowd:
The bad news is that the Boston Globe is siding with the barbarians, comparing the Danish cartoonists to Nazis. Just look at the photo and decide who really deserves that comparison. Michael Graham is unhappy with the Globe, too.
The funny thing is that the Globe views fundamentalist Christians as a god-besotted threat to liberty, but makes excuses for people like this.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more thoughts. And Michelle Malkin has a must-see video presentation. And a reader points out that the Boston Globe was defending "Piss Christ" artist Andres Serrano's right to federal funding back in 1990. Apparently, standards of decency have "evolved" at the Globe, or perhaps it's just a measure of who they're actually afraid of.
That last is a cheap shot, I suppose, and I suspect that it's not so much fear of radical Islamists as an extremely off-kilter sensitivity to the Other that underlies the Globe's position.
Apparently, the Boston Globe is almost as offended as the "Behead those who insult Islam" crowd:
The bad news is that the Boston Globe is siding with the barbarians, comparing the Danish cartoonists to Nazis. Just look at the photo and decide who really deserves that comparison. Michael Graham is unhappy with the Globe, too.
The funny thing is that the Globe views fundamentalist Christians as a god-besotted threat to liberty, but makes excuses for people like this.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more thoughts. And Michelle Malkin has a must-see video presentation. And a reader points out that the Boston Globe was defending "Piss Christ" artist Andres Serrano's right to federal funding back in 1990. Apparently, standards of decency have "evolved" at the Globe, or perhaps it's just a measure of who they're actually afraid of.
That last is a cheap shot, I suppose, and I suspect that it's not so much fear of radical Islamists as an extremely off-kilter sensitivity to the Other that underlies the Globe's position.
posted by Kate Marie | 1:07 PM | Permalink
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13 comments
13 Comments:
The position of the Boston Globe:
Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance.
is intellectually indistinguishable from the position of the Bush administration:
"State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, reading the U.S. government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
KM, Volokh dealt best with the hypocrisy and double standard at work in the Boston Globe piece.
Alex, you make KM's point, I think. The Bush administration thinks bigotry is offensive in all respects. Ostensibly, as Professor Volokh points out, the Globe is a bit more selective in its condemnation of it.
Alex: Specifically, it's the position of the State Department, which often has its own agenda vis-a-vis the White House, but if that turns out to be the position of the administration, too, then let me be the first one here to say that it's the wrong position.
I'm willing to believe that State may have strategic reasons for playing the "good cop" in this conflict, but I'm not sure I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. As a writer (and former cartoonist), I was dismayed this week to find that if I were to pen something that offended violent maniacs, neither a Democratic ex-president nor a nominally Republican State Department would defend my rights, nor would the support of the British and American press be unambiguous.
Fortunately, I'm not given to making inflammatory or controversial statements, but it's useful nonetheless to know how alone I'd be--although I suppose Salman Rushdie could have told us the same thing years ago.
I must say I agree that if that's the Bush administration's position, it's the wrong position. That was the point of my "What is up with this?" link to the State Department statement. Not to get too trivial about it, but I think this is an "I'm Spartacus" moment. Those who link to the cartoons and "buy Danish" are not celebrating adolescent offensiveness, as Hugh Hewitt would have it, but standing up for the bedrock principles of American democracy, and of Western liberal democracy in general. They're standing up for "raucous debate," as Jeff puts it, and free expression -- and, I might add, freedom of religion.
P.S. Alex, I'm being denied access to your blog at the moment (I'm assuming it's a glitch with blogger), but I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed the two posts in a row sticking it to Crooked Timber and John Quiggin in particular. Sometime nemesis and all-around godless liberal you may be, but I'm putting you on the blogroll. :)
Jeff and Kate Marie,
I think you are both misreading the positions of the Globe and the State Department. Both support the right of the newspapers to publish the cartoons, and both criticize the decision to do. Isn't this the standard reaction to racist speech?
Its certainly wrong to claim that either our government or the Globe is "siding with the barbarians." As to whether people ought to be allowed to publish such cartoons or punished for publishing them, the barbarians and our government/the Globe couldn't be further apart.
P.S. Kate Marie, I hadn't seen your link to the State Department statement when I wrote my comment.
Alex, I'm not sure what your position is. Do you agree that the Globe should not print the cartoons? And do you think the cartoons are racist?
The Globe is, at the very least, being inconsistent, as it hasn't taken the same line with depictions/representations which are offensive to Christians. And by the Globe's logic, they should not have reviewed or in any way advertised The Satanic Verses, either.
I'm sure the cartoons *were* meant to be provocative. I might have made a different decision in the first place about publishing them. But they *were* published, and they provoked, in some quarters, a barbarous reaction. At this point, then, it's about taking sides -- for "our" principles, or for sensitivity to the "otherness of the Other," which, when I think about it, *does* amount to a kind of appeasement. I would print the cartoons -- even while I acknowledged how offensive they are -- in order to stand in solidarity with the rest of the Western world for a cherished principle. In other words, the cartoons' offensiveness is beside the point at this juncture. I want the Western media to make a statement -- something that they like to flatter themselves they do all the time when it doesn't really cost them anything.
" Alex, I'm not sure what your position is. Do you agree that the Globe should not print the cartoons? And do you think the cartoons are racist?"
Dunno. I don't read Danish and I haven't seen a complete english translation of the cartoons.
My position is that its ridiculous to suggest that our government, or the Globe, is siding with terrorists. They may be wrong on the offensiveness of the cartoons - I'll reserve judgement on this one for now - but siding with terrorists? They have repeatedly affirmed the right of free people to publish such material.
It seems there are transcriptions of the cartoons at the wikipedia page. Anyway, I've written about whether or not they are racist or offensive on my blog.
Alex, let me start with a quibble. Reynolds says the Globe is siding with the barbarians, not with the terrorists. While the latter group is surely comprised exclusively of barbarians, the former group is not wholly -- or even, necessarily, mostly -- of terrorists.
Second, Reynolds specific reference to the Globe siding with the barbarians suggests that what he has in mind is the Globe's apparent agreement with the "barbarians" that the Danish cartoonists were like Nazis.
That said, however, while I don't think the Globe's or the State Department's positions mean they have abandoned their commitment to free speech, their "defense" of free speech in this instance and context is too ambiguous for my taste -- not to mention, at least in the Globe's case, hypocritical.
If I were the Globe's editor-in-chief, I would say something like this: "We find the following cartoons offensive. However, as they are now the subject of widespread controversy, we reprint them here so that our readers may see for themselves what provoked the controversy, and so that we may reaffirm our commitment to the principle of free speech."
By the way, I like your post on the supposed offensiveness of the cartoons themselves.
KM, it is interesting that a Jordanian newspaper did what you suggested. That is, they re-printed the cartoons (or at least some of them) in order to inform their readers, yet denounced them at the same time. Of course, I don't think they were affirming a commitment to the principle of free speech.
The thing is, even a flattering depiction of the prophet may have ignited furor. The cartoons were drawn as a reaction to an author's complaint that NOBODY would illustrate his book on the prophet unless they could remain anonymous. There is real fear in Europe.
"Reynolds specific reference to the Globe siding with the barbarians suggests that what he has in mind is the Globe's apparent agreement with the "barbarians" that the Danish cartoonists were like Nazis."
But the Globe never said this. It said that the cartoons are as hurtful to Muslims as Nazi caricatures are hurtful to Jews. There was no comparison at all of the cartoonists to Nazis, only a comparison of the of the offensiveness of the cartoons.
And yes, I agree with your proposed statement for the Globe.
Whoops. The the Two Jordanian newspaper editors who published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have been arrested.
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